Virunga National Park - The African Mirror

Jun

2023

Uganda sends more troops to pursue attackers who killed 37 students

UGANDA'S President Yoweri Museveni ordered more troops to western Uganda where attackers from a group with links to Islamic State killed at least 37 secondary school students. Members of the rebel Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) killed the students late on Friday at Lhubirira Secondary School in Mpondwe, near the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo. Military and police said the attackers had also abducted six students and fled towards the Virunga National Park across the border. Their fate is unknown. Museveni said more soldiers had joined the pursuit in the area, which includes Rwenzori Mountain, from where the ADF launched their…

Feb

2021

By The African Mirror

DRC armed group deny killing Italian envoy

NEWS

FISTON MAHAMBA and STANIS BUJAKERA AN armed group in eastern Congo, accused by the government of carrying out an ambush on a United Nations convoy in which Italy's ambassador and two other people were killed, has denied any involvement in the attack. Congo's interior ministry on Monday blamed a Hutu militia called the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), which is active near where ambassador Luca Attanasio, 43 and his bodyguard Vittorio Iacovacci, 30, were shot. World Food Programme driver Mustapha Milambo was also killed, local officials said. The FDLR was founded by senior Rwandan officers and militiamen…

Jan

2021

By The African Mirror

46 civilians feared killed in DRC

NEWS

FORTY-SIX civilians are reported to have been killed in an attack by suspected Islamist militants on a village in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, according to a senior provincial official. Local security forces have been dispatched to the village in Irumu territory to investigate, provincial interior minister Adjio Gidi said by phone. "The death toll as of this afternoon is reported to be 46," Gidi said. He said the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) were behind the raid. The Ugandan armed group is believed to have carried out a string of massacres in eastern Congo, killing more than 1,000 civilians since…

Jan

2021

By The African Mirror

Guardians of Congo’s gorillas unbowed as ambushed colleague is buried

NEWS

A line of Congolese park rangers raised their guns in salute on Monday as the coffin bearing their colleague Burhani Abdou Surumwe, a 30-year-old father of four, was buried in the black volcanic soil of a Muslim cemetery outside Goma. Abdou was one of six rangers killed on Sunday in an ambush in Democratic Republic of Congo’s Virunga National Park, a sanctuary for endangered mountain gorillas that is also home to dozens of armed groups. The rangers, heavily armed and well-trained, are frequently attacked. In April, a dozen of their number from the Congo Institute for Nature Conservation (ICCN) were…

Jan

2021

By The African Mirror

Six Virunga Park rangers killed in eastern Congo ambush

NEWS

ARMED men yesterday killed at least six rangers and wounded several others in an ambush in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo's Virunga National Park, a sanctuary for endangered mountain gorillas, the park said. The identity of the assailants was not immediately clear, said Olivier Mukisya, a Virunga spokesman. Previous attacks against the rangers have been blamed on various militias who fight to control land and natural resources in eastern Congo. "We confirm this sad news. A group of armed men attacked our positions in the region of Nyamitwitwi in the middle of Virunga National Park," Mukisya told Reuters. More than…