KAMPALA: Uganda’s army said Friday that it had launched attacks on a shadowy rebel group in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo), where the militants killed 14 UN peacekeepers earlier this month.
“Shared intelligence between Uganda and the DR Congo confirmed that the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) terrorists which recently carried out attacks on UN peacekeepers... were planning to conduct hostile activities against Uganda,” the army said in a statement.
“In a pre-emptive move, this afternoon UPDF (Ugandan People’s Defense Force) conducted attacks on their camps in Eastern DRC.”
The ADF, a Ugandan rebel group dominated by Muslim militants operating in the DR Congo, was behind an attack that left 14 Tanzanian peacekeepers dead two weeks ago, according to the UN.
The ADF started out with the aim of overthrowing Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni, who was seen as hostile to Muslims. But it went on to absorb other rebel factions and started carrying out attacks in 1995.
Gradually pushed westwards by the Ugandan army, the ADF relocated most of its activities to the DR Congo.
It was also blamed for an ambush on UN peacekeepers in eastern DR Congo in October, which killed two peacekeepers and wounded 12.
It has also been accused by Kinshasa and the UN peacekeeping mission MONUSCO of killing more than 700 people in the Beni region since October 2014.
Kinshasa has insisted on a militant motive to the killings, but many observers and experts say that there has been no proven link with the global militancy underground, and that this is a “simplistic” explanation for their acts.
Many ADF recruits — drawn from Tanzania, Burundi, Kenya and as far as Somalia — are young Muslims.
A group run by US researcher Jason Stearns published a report claiming that several distinct groups “appear to be involved in the massacres,” including soldiers from the regular army.
The government rejected the claims and Stearns was expelled from the DR Congo after the report’s release.
Beni’s Mayor Bwanakawa Nyonyi told AFP last year that he believed the massacres were carried out by a nebulous group, with politically motivated “Congolese hands” behind them.
In explaining the violence, some have cited struggles for control of trafficking in various industries like timber, agricultural produce or minerals in a region with extremely rich resource potential.
Ugandan army says it attacked rebel camps in DR Congo
Ugandan army says it attacked rebel camps in DR Congo
Militants kill 6 officers and a civilian in ambushes on police vehicles in northwest Pakistan
- Assailants ambushed a police vehicle and killed one officer in Kohat — when police reinforcements arrived, they launched another attack and killed five more officers and a civilian
- No group claimed responsibility for this week’s attacks, but suspicion may fall on the Pakistani Taliban, also known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or the TTP
PESHAWAR, Pakistan: A pair of attacks on police vehicles by suspected militants killed at least six police officers and a civilian in northwest Pakistan on Tuesday, authorities said.
The assailants ambushed a police vehicle and killed one officer in Kohat, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. When police reinforcements arrived minutes later, they launched another attack and killed five more officers and a civilian, police official Kamran Khan said.
Separately on Tuesday, a suicide bomber detonated explosives at a police post in Bukkur, a district in eastern Punjab province, killing two officers and wounding four others, police official Shahzad Rafiq said.
He provided no further details and only said officers were still investigating.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks, which have increased across the country in recent months.
President Asif Ali Zardari condemned the attacks in Kohat and Bukkur and offered condolences to the victims’ families.
The latest violence followed an attack on a paramilitary post in Karak on Monday, when a drone loaded with explosives wounded several officers. The attackers later ambushed two ambulances transporting the wounded, killing three officers and burning their bodies before fleeing. The driver of the second ambulance transported several wounded officers despite suffering burn injuries and authorities recovered the remains of the three officers.
No group claimed responsibility for this week’s attacks, but suspicion may fall on the Pakistani Taliban, also known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or the TTP. The TTP is separate from, but closely allied with, Afghanistan’s Taliban. Islamabad has accused the group of operating from inside Afghanistan, a claim the TTP and Kabul deny.
Pakistan’s military said it killed at least 70 militants on Sunday in strikes along the Afghan border, targeting hideouts of Pakistani militants blamed for recent attacks inside the country.
