Kinshasa-DRC: UN helicopters attacked Ugandan Rebels who are active in the Democratic republic of Congo’s (DRC) volatile east in an operation that inflicted huge losses to the rebels.
The operation was done under joint cooperation between MONUSCO and the Congolese troops in the first of a series of planned attacks against the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF). It was the first time that the UN mission had engaged in military cooperation with the Congolese since February, when it was suspended after DRC authorities named two generals accused of gross human rights abuses to oversee joint operations.
The ADF camps in Semuliki, a village near the Ugandan border were the target of the operation which was orchestrated using advanced combat helicopters. The ADF began over 20 years ago when its founding members launched a rebellion against Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni but were forced to retreat into DRC.
The United Nations, which maintains a peacekeeping mission of almost 20,000 troops and police in the vast central African country, accuses the ADF of killing more than 500 civilians in massacres and attacks in DR Congo's Beni territory and the Ituri region since October 2014.
The recent offensive against them has however been fueled by series of attacks by the ADF using automatic weapons targeting army outposts, civilian vehicles and passersby that began in September 2015.
