Goma, DR Congo – One UN peacekeeper was killed Monday and 15 others were injured in a rebel attack by members of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) on a United Nations base in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a military spokesperson in the area said today.
The army spokesman Mak Hazukay confirmed by phone to SoftPower that one peacekeeper was killed after fighters from the Allied Democratic Forces attacked a UN base in Mamundioma, a village near Beni city in North Kivu province.
Florence Marshall, a spokeswoman for the UN mission in Congo also confirmed the attack and said the UN soldiers had been deployed forces to fight off the attackers.
Several killings in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo have been blamed on the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a rebel group which is dominated by hardline Ugandan Muslims.
The ADF’s leader, Jamil Mukulu, was arrested in Tanzania in 2015 and repatriated to Uganda where he faces treason and murder offenses.
Last Friday, three rebels from unknown tribal militiamen were killed and two UN soldiers slightly wounded when the armed men attacked a UN military base in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
The attack came after 12 members of a militia group known as Mai Mai were in the same week killed by government in the North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Renewed fighting between government troops and several rebel groups has been going on in the last weeks across Congo since President Joseph Kabila refused to step down when his mandate ended last December.
Congo, almost the size of Western Europe and the world’s largest source of cobalt, has for two decades struggled to defeat dozens of local and foreign militias in the east, which has deposits of tin, gold and coltan. The ADF, a Ugandan Islamist armed group, has been active in Congo since 1993.
According to the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), more than 3,000 people have fled to Zambia in month of August to escape escalating violence in Democratic Republic of Congo.
“The refugees and asylum-seekers are escaping inter-ethnic clashes, as well as fighting between Congolese security forces and militia groups,” the refugee agency said in a statement last Tuesday.