The Ugandan Army has announced that it is preparing to deploy military personnel to eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) as part of the East African Community (EAC) mission in the face of an upsurge in fighting between the Armed Forces and the March 23 Movement (M23) rebels.
The spokesman of the Ugandan Army, Felix Kulaigye, highlighted in a message published on his account on the social network Twitter that «Ugandan troops are in the final stages of their deployment in the DRC under the EAC force».
«The force is currently undergoing the last phase of training before being inserted in eastern DRC to join their Kenyan counterparts already in Goma,» he said, referring to the recent dispatch of troops by Nairobi to deal with the situation.
Kulaigye himself has detailed in declarations granted to the British television channel BBC that Kampala will send around a thousand military to the region of Ituri before the end of the month.
The M23 has been accused since November 2021 of carrying out attacks against DRC Army positions in North Kivu, seven years after the parties reached a truce. UN experts have accused Uganda and Rwanda of supporting the rebels, although both countries have denied this.
The conflict has also led to a diplomatic crisis between the DRC and Rwanda, which Kinshasa accuses of supporting the M23, although Kigali has rejected these claims and has accused its neighbor of allegedly supporting the rebel movement of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR).
Uganda has also deployed military personnel in the DRC to fight the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), which pledged allegiance to the jihadist group Islamic State in Central Africa (ISCA), under a military cooperation agreement with Kinshasa.
