Wounded soldiers in DRC evacuated following clashes with ADF rebels

By

Darell Maurice

Eleven Congolese soldiers and peacekeepers were injured on Monday in clashes with Ugandan rebels in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo were finally evacuated after a failed first attempt, the UN stated.

The twelve were wounded during a joint operation of the Congolese army (FARDC) and Peacekeepers against rebels of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), said Theophane Kinda, spokesman for the United Nations Mission in the DRC (MONUSCO) at Wednesday’s press conference.

He did not specify where they had been transferred for treatment .

MONUSCO said it had “finally managed to recover” the twelve wounded soldiers , twenty four hours later, after the failure of a first operation where rescue helicopters had fired on “unknown forces” before turning back.

The day before, MONUSCO provided an initial assessment of five Congolese soldiers wounded and a blue helmet peacekeeper whose nationality was not specified.

The ADF reportedly have a stronghold in the northern area of the province of North Kivu, bordering Ituri, Eringeti and its surroundings, a Ugandan Muslim rebellion present in eastern DRC since 1995.

MONUSCO and the Congolese government are responsible alongside the ADF in a series of massacres that killed nearly 600 civilians in the Beni area since October 2014.

In a report released in March however, the Task Force on the Congo, research center of the University of New York, felt that the ADF were actually a very important part in terms of the responsibility for the killings, albeit alongside other armed elements, including soldiers of the regular armed forces.

Darell Maurice

Darell Maurice is a Journalist based in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s capital city Kinshasa and works for Canal7kintv.