Fighting between army and rebels kills 30 in DRC

Beni – Fighting between the Congolese army and a Ugandan rebel group has claimed about 30 lives, a human rights activist said on Monday.
The fatalities included 14 members of the rebel group Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), eight soldiers and seven civilians, said Omar Kavota from the Centre for the Promotion of Peace and Human Rights.
He said a UN peacekeeper was also killed, but there was no immediate confirmation from the UN mission in Democratic Republic of Congo.
The fighting took place in Eringeti near Beni in the east. The ADF massacred hundreds of civilians in the area last year.
Kavota said the rebels attacked the village and set a health centre on fire. The army took control of Eringeti on Monday, after most of its residents had fled.
The army launched an offensive in January 2014 against the Islamist ADF, which was founded in 1995 in Uganda and later moved to DRC.
Dozens of armed groups have remained active in eastern DRC since the country’s 1996-2003 wars, sparked by more than one million Rwandans flooding into the region after the 1994 Rwandan genocide.