Ugandan Military Kills ADF Rebels Suspected of Murdering Tourists

By Xinhua 

November 2, 2023

The Ugandan military said Thursday it has killed six Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) rebels and captured a commander believed to be responsible for the murder of two foreign tourists and their local guide in a national game park in the country’s western region last month.

The rebels were killed during a firefight with joint troops along Lake Edward, which is shared between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), on Tuesday night, according to a statement by Dick Olum, the overall commander of the joint Uganda-DRC operation against ADF.

“Four of them were killed and drowned, while two were shot and badly injured. They attempted to survive by swimming across the river but couldn’t make it further and died,” Olum said.

“We recovered several items related to the incident involving the killing of the two tourists, including the national identity cards of the victims,” he added.

The victims, a foreign couple on their honeymoon, David and Cecilia Barlow, and their Ugandan guide Eric Alyai, were killed when their safari vehicle was attacked in the Queen Elizabeth National Park area in the western district of Kasese on Oct. 17.

Olum also announced the capture of ADF commander Abdul Rashid Kyoto, known as “Njovu,” during the Tuesday raid.

He urged the local population to provide information that could assist the troops in identifying and apprehending individuals with ill intentions to disrupt the peace of Ugandans.

The ADF, a branch of the Islamic State in Central Africa, is a Ugandan rebel group entrenched in the jungles of eastern DRC. Ugandan troops, in cooperation with their DRC counterparts, have been jointly combating the rebel group since November 2021.