Over 30 killed in fighting between Congolese army and rebels

Beni – More than 30 people were killed in eastern Congo in fighting between the army and a rebel Ugandan group of origin, the military said Thursday.
Twenty members of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) and 11 government soldiers have been killed since Monday in the villages north of the town of Beni, the military said.
The army has regained control of the region Wednesday and the rebels fled, spokesman Hazukay Mongba Mak said.
The army launched an offensive in January 2014 against the Islamist ADF, which was founded in 1995 in Uganda and later in the Congo. The group has killed hundreds of people in the Beni region last year.
Dozens of armed groups have remained active in eastern Congo since the 1996-2003 Congo wars, caused by more than one million Rwandans flooding in the region after the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
Many armed groups terrorizing the local populations to have free rein in the trafficking of rich natural resources of the region, according to activists of human rights.