The President of Uganda, Yoweri Museveni announced on Saturday that an airstrike by the country’s military had killed members of an Islamic State (IS)-allied rebel group, including a key person responsible for bomb attacks in the capital.
The strike took place on September 16 in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo, and intelligence gathered after the strike confirmed that members of the group, the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), had been killed, he said.
“A lot of terrorists were killed, including the notorious Meddie Nkalubo, who has been the author of the bombs in Kampala,” Museveni said in a statement referring to Uganda’s capital.
He did not specify the number of people killed. Uganda launched an airstrike operations against the ADF in eastern Congo in December 2021, but the group continues to carry out attacks in both Congo and Uganda, both against civilians and military targets.
Seven people were killed in suicide bombings in 2021 outside a major police station in Kampala and close to the parliament building, two of the group’s most devastating attacks in Uganda.
In June this year, 42 people, mostly students, were massacred at a school in Kasese in western Uganda—another attack Uganda blamed on the ADF.
The rebel group is widely believed to seek to establish Islamic rule in the East African country. It emerged in the 1990s in Uganda’s west but was eventually routed by the military, and remnants fled into the jungles of eastern Congo, where they have been operating since then.
The ADF has not responded to the Ugandan raid and hardly ever issues statements.
