Uganda’s Museveni orders air strikes after 10 killed in ADF rebel attack

Kampala — The number of people killed during an attack in Western Uganda by rebels allied to Islamic State (IS) has risen to ten, President Yoweri Museveni said on Wednesday, adding that he had ordered a retaliatory air strike on rebel targets.

Assailants from the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) struck an area in Kamwenge district in western Uganda about 10pm on Monday. The ten people killed in the attack included farmers in their fields as well as revellers in a bar, Museveni said in a statement.

“The terrorists were killing people using pangas (machetes) because they feared that using bullets would alert the population that is hostile to them,” Museveni said, adding that the attackers were a group of four.

“This morning our various air-platforms, attacked the terrorist leaders in (Democratic Republic of) Congo...we shall get the results after some days. They (rebels) are paying for their (moral) bankruptcy.”

On Tuesday, the area legislator had told Reuters five people had been killed in the attack.

The ADF was formed as an anti-Kampala rebel group in the mid-1990s and initially battled Museveni’s government from bases in the Rwenzori mountains.

They were eventually routed and remnants fled into the jungles of eastern Congo where they set up new bases from which they have since been carrying out attacks in both Uganda and Congo.

The retaliatory air strike was carried out in Congo on a target about 80km from its border with Uganda, Museveni said. He said the assailants in Monday's attack were part of a larger group that killed students in June and tourists in October.

Reuters