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KINSHASA. — The United Nations has deployed reinforcements to its Democratic Republic of Congo peacekeeping force near the eastern town Beni, after two soldiers were killed in an ambush on Tuesday.“This morning we sent reinforcements to the Beni area — a rapid response unit to back up those caught in ambush,” Felix Prosper Basse, spokesperson for the UN’s Monusco DRC mission, told AFP the day after the two Tanzanian blue helmets were killed near Beni.
Basse added that Monusco’s military leader, Brazilian General Carlos Alberto dos Santos Cruz, would also travel to Beni — a trading hub in an area regularly bloodied in attacks by Ugandan rebels from the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF).
Santos Cruz’s objective in the town, Basse said, was to co-ordinate “robust measures” against members of the ADF suspected of having staged Tuesday’s deadly ambush.
The Muslim rebels of the ADF, who launched an insurgency in neighbouring Uganda against President Yoweri Museveni in the mid-1990s, are accused of killing more than 260 civilians in and around Beni between October and December last year.
In addition to the two Tanzanian peacekeepers killed this week, 13 other UN forces were wounded, and an undisclosed number of civilians also died.
The attack was the second within 48 hours on UN personnel.
On Monday a UN helicopter carrying Santos Cruz was fired upon by unknown gunmen and forced to make an emergency landing. — Reuters.
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