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Ugandan rebels kill peacekeeper

"An Indian blue helmet was killed ... when [his camp] was hit by an RPG 7 rocket."

UN statement

Ugandan rebels on Sunday killed an Indian UN peacekeeping soldier and wounded four others in an attack in Nord-Kivu Province in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the UN said.

"An Indian blue helmet was killed and four others wounded, one seriously" when their camp at a village in Nord-Kivu "was hit by an RPG 7 rocket and came under heavy fire, to which they responded forcefully," a statement from the UN mission in the DRC, MONUC, said.

The attack in the early hours of the morning was blamed on Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) rebels opposed to President Yoweri Museveni's regime in Uganda, across the eastern border.

The incident took place at Mukungwe, a village south of Beni in the north of the province.

"The UN soldiers came under fire as they were occupying a position to seal off the zone south of Beni, MONUC military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Frederic Medard said, adding that the UN troops fired back, driving off the attackers.

Since Saturday, 3,500 DRC government troops and 600 UN soldiers have beeen engaged in a joint operation to get the Ugandan rebels out of the DRC, which they use for a rear base.

Uganda's government has for months been urging Kinshasa to move against the ADF/National Army for the Liberation of Uganda forces (NALU), and the military action in DRC is under way south of Beni and Eringeti, on the edge of the Ituri district, where other militias and armed groups plague the local villagers.

The MONUC statement described ADF/NALU as "a permanent source of insecurity to local people", estimating it had between 1,500 and 2,000 members, and said its members engaged in poaching and various kinds of illegal trafficking.

"Until now, ADF/NALU have rejected all disarmament proposals and an amnesty and repatriation to Uganda," Medard said. The DRC national army "thus decided to launch an operation against them, and MONUC has stepped in to help the Congolese forces."

MONUC estimates that so far 35 Ugandan rebels have been killed.

Three DRC soldiers have been killed and 16 injured.

Since the MONUC mission was first set up in 1990 and is now the world's biggest peacekeeping force, with 18,600 members deployed across a vast nation emerging from a devastating war, 20 UN soldiers have been killed on active service.
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