President Yoweri Museveni said an airstrike by the Uganda People’s Defense Forces (UPDF) killed several members of an Islamic State (IS)-allied rebel group including a key person responsible for bomb attacks in Uganda’s capital.
The strike was carried out in neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo on September 16 and intelligence gathered after the strike had confirmed members of group, Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), had been killed, Museveni 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.
He did not say how many were killed. In December 2021 Uganda launched an operation in eastern Congo against ADF but the group still carries out attacks both against civilians and military targets in Congo and Uganda.
In two of the group’s most devastating attacks in Uganda, suicide bombings in 2021 outside a major police station in Kampala and near the parliament building left seven people dead.
In June this year, 42 people, mostly students, were massacred at a school in Kasese in western Uganda — another attack Uganda blamed on ADF. The rebel group is widely believed to seek to establish an Islamic rule in Uganda.
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 from since then. ADF almost never send out statements and have not commented on the Ugandan raid.
Below is the president’s full statement
Fellow Ugandans and, especially the Bazzukulu.
This is to inform you that last Saturday, the 16th of September, 2023, our Air Force attacked four ADF terrorists’ targets that were between kms 100 and kms 150 from the Ugandan border on the Ntoroko side.
These targets had been located by assets from our Special Duties Regiments (SDR) that have good reconnaissance assets. According to subsequent intelligence, it seems that a lot of terrorists were killed, including the notorious Meddie Nkalubo, who has been the author of the bombs in Kampala – e.g. those near the Police Station in Kampala, that one near Parliament and the ones that were discovered recently near Kayanja’s Church and in the Bunamwaya area.
These uninformed People, have been playing with deadly fire for a long time. They will now discover that killing Ugandans is not a good hobby.
In this part of the World, there is nowhere we cannot get them, if we coordinate with the Governments of the sister countries. We salute His Excellency Felix Tshisekedi for allowing us to work with the Congo Army to liberate this part of Congo from these mindless criminals and also punish them for killing Ugandans using infiltrators.
You remember the recent killing of the Nyabugaando children by cutting them with pangas, the Sheikhs, Major Kiggundu, Gen. Katumba’s daughter, Joan Kagezi, etc.
All those involved will perish unless they surrender.
Signed: Yoweri K. Museveni Gen. (Rtd) Ssaabalwanyi
Source: The Observer
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