Uganda’s president says airstrikes killed ‘a lot’ of rebels with ties to Islamic State in Congo

KAMPALA, Uganda — Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni mentioned Saturday that latest airstrikes towards rebels with ties to the Islamic State group in jap Congo have killed “lots” of the militants, presumably together with a infamous bomb maker.

The assertion issued by the president’s workplace did not present particulars on the Sept. 16 airstrikes focusing on the Allied Democratic Forces, or ADF, a shadowy extremist group suspected within the June bloodbath of no less than 41 folks, most of them college students, and different violence towards civilians from bases in Congo’s unstable east.

The airstrikes focused 4 insurgent camps positioned between 100-150 kilometers (62-93 miles) from the Uganda border, in keeping with Museveni’s assertion.

Uganda and Congo launched joint navy operations towards the ADF in 2021.

Meddie Nkalubo, a suspected Ugandan bomb maker with the ADF, was probably killed within the airstrikes, in keeping with the assertion.

ADF fighters typically conduct lethal raids throughout the border, together with the assault in June on a faculty dormitory.

The ADF has lengthy opposed the rule of Museveni, a U.S. safety ally who has held energy within the East African nation since 1986.

The group was established within the early Nineties by Ugandan Muslims who mentioned they’d been sidelined by Museveni’s insurance policies. On the time, the rebels staged lethal assaults in Ugandan villages and the capital, together with a 1998 assault by which 80 college students have been massacred in a city not removed from the scene of the June assault.

A Ugandan navy operation had pressured the ADF to flee to jap Congo, the place many insurgent teams function, making the most of the central authorities’s restricted management there. The ADF has since established ties with the Islamic State group.