A rebel group based in Congo and in partnership with the Islamic State has killed at least one man and wounded one other when it ambushed a truck in western Uganda overnight, according to the army on Friday, October 13 in a relatively rare cross-border attack.
The Allied Democratic Forces, –ADF, had initially begun as a Ugandan insurgency but has operated from the jungles of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo for almost 30 years.
In 2019, the ADF pledged its allegiance to Islamic State, and it has since claimed responsibility for a number of the group’s bombings and killings.
According to Deo Akiiki, the deputy spokesperson for the Ugandan People’s Defence Forces (UPDF), at around 01:00 (10:00 GMT) on Friday, five ADF men ambushed a vehicle conveying onions at a road junction in Katojo, a village about 3 km from the Congolese border.
Out of the truck’s four occupants, only one man was shot dead, while another remains missing. The third got seriously injured, while the fourth individual– a woman escaped unhurt, Akiiki had said in a statement.
“The UPDF squads are presently tracking down the attackers,” Akiiki had remarked.
Two years ago the UPDF established a ground and air campaign operation in eastern Congo to try to ferret out the insurgents, which it claimed had succeeded in killing over 560 fighters and demolished their camps.
Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni, the Ugandan President had last month revealed that an air strike had killed a senior ADF commander by name: Meddie Nkalubo. Nkalubo is the suspected mastermind of the suicide bombings that happened in Kampala which killed seven people.
