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Four army soldiers, 13 rebels killed in DR Congo clashes

Sunday, 08 March 2020 11:04 AM [ Last Update: Sunday, 08 March 2020 11:04 AM ]

A UN peacekeeper in the Democratic Republic of the Congo holds a machine gun while protecting a press trip to the Masisi Territory, North Kivu Province, eastern DR Congo, on April 11, 2019. (Photo by AFP)

Heavy clashes between government forces and armed rebels in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have left four soldiers and at least 13 militia gunmen dead in the country’s troubled east.

Lieutenant Anthony Mualushayi, a spokesman for the DR Congo’s army, made the announcement on Saturday and said the fatalities took place as the two sides clashed in the eastern city of Beni in the North Kivu region, which borders Uganda.

Mualushayi said the clashes had killed 14 members of the so-called Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), while another army spokesman, Sylvain Ekenge, put the figure at 13.

At least five army soldiers were also wounded in the fighting, Mualushayi added.

The ADF, originally a Ugandan rebel group opposed to the country’s President Yoweri Museveni, has been operating along the Congo-Uganda border for more than two decades.

10 civilians killed by ADF militants in eastern DR Congo

ADF militants kill at least 10 people in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The group has plagued the North Kivu region since the Congo Wars in the 1990s and is blamed for hundreds of civilian deaths in Beni.

Several of the ADF’s attacks have also been claimed by the Takfiri Daesh terrorist group, but there is no clear evidence of affiliation between the two.

Since October last year, the DR Congo’s army has launched a crackdown against the armed group to contain the violence and restore calm in the eastern region.

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