At least a dozen soldiers were
killed in Democratic Republic of Congo's volatile eastern
borderlands where the army is battling Ugandan Islamist rebels,
Congolese security and diplomatic sources said on Friday.
The armies of Congo and Uganda launched a military offensive
last month against the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) rebels,
who were suspected of being behind a December 8 attack on a UN
base that killed 15 Tanzanian peacekeepers.
A senior army source said that more than 20 other Congolese
soldiers were also wounded after gunmen launched an attack
during the night near the town of Eringeti in North Kivu
province. Fighting continued into Friday morning, he said.
"The combat continues and our goal is to recapture all the
ADF positions in all strategic locations to keep them from
organising," said the senior officer, who asked not to be named
as he was not authorised to speak to the press.
A senior Congolese security official confirmed the attack as
did a foreign diplomat, who said information he had received put
the death toll at 22 Congolese soldiers killed.
"We are at war. And when you are at war, ambushes are
possible. That does not surprise me," Congolese Defence Minister
Crispin Atama Tabe told reporters in the capital Kinshasa when
asked about the attack.
Rival militia groups control parts of eastern Congo, long
after the official end of a 1998-2003 war in which millions of
people died, mostly from hunger and disease.
Increased violence this year in the centre and east comes as
Congo faces a political crisis linked to President Joseph
Kabila's refusal to step down when his mandate expired in
December 2016.
