Congo ex-rebels head home from Uganda

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M23 ended their insurgency in 2013Image caption: M23 ended their insurgency in 2013

Uganda’s government has repatriated 70 Congolese ex-rebels and their families, AFP news agency quotes the foreign ministry as saying.

It adds that the ex-rebels had volunteered to return home five years after they were defeated.

They had all been members of a rebel group called M23.

Ugandan ministry of foreign affairs spokesman Moses Kasujja told AFP that UN officials watched as the group boarded a plane in Uganda’s main airport in Entebbe.

The M23 is made up of fighters who deserted from the Congolese army in April 2012 following a mutiny.

They are mostly from the Tutsi ethnic group, a minority in eastern DR Congo but with ties to Rwanda’s leaders.

Several hundred ended up living in a Ugandan-run camp in the west of the country. The 70 who flew back on Tuesday are not the first to go home, with a total of 316 now having been officially repatriated.

BBC