Islamic State group-linked rebel commander killed in Ugandan rainforest, army says

PHOTO CAPTION: Uganda People’s Defense Force (UPDF) soldiers with Ugandan Battle Group 22, provide security as they prepare to transport a simulated casualty during a medical exercise at Camp Singo, Uganda, March 3, 2017. (U.S. Air National Guard photo by Staff Sgt. Penny Snoozy via U.S. Defense Visual Information Distribution Service)

By Elias Biryabarema

(Reuters) - Uganda's army said it killed a commander of a unit of the Islamist rebel Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) blamed for a string of deadly attacks including a massacre at a boarding school.

Musa Kamusi - high on the army's 'Most Wanted' list - was killed in an operation in Kibale National Park, a rainforest in western Uganda near the border with Democratic Republic of Congo, army spokesman Deo Akiiki said.

Authorities have accused Kamusi's unit of killing 37 students in a school near the border in June, a honeymooning couple from Britain and South Africa and their Ugandan guide in October, and ten farmers and bar customers near the national park on Dec. 18.

"Our troops hunting down ADF elements in Kibale forest... managed to kill one of the ADF suspected leaders," Akiiki said in a statement late on Wednesday.

He did not go into further details, but Caleb Weiss, an expert on political violence in Africa with the Bridgeway Foundation, wrote on X it reportedly happened earlier the same day.

"Remains unconfirmed, but obviously significant for security in (Uganda's) west if true," Weiss wrote.

ADF pledged allegiance to Islamic State four years ago. That coincided with a dramatic uptick in deadly attacks on civilians, though United Nations experts say they have not found conclusive evidence of Islamic State command and control over the rebel group's operations.

The ADF was formed as an anti-Kampala rebel group in the mid-1990s, but they were eventually largely routed and fled to the jungles of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where they have killed thousands of civilians.

Kamusi's group was known for keeping up operations inside western Uganda.



(Reporting by Elias Biryabarema; Writing by Hereward Holland; Editing by Andrew Heavens)