Drones have attacked the airport serving Kisangani, a strategic city in northeast Democratic Republic of Congo far from active front lines in the east, local officials said on Monday, blaming the AFC\/M23 rebel group and neighbouring Rwanda.<\/p>\n
AFC\/M23, which U.N. experts say is backed by Rwanda, launched drones at the airport\u00a0in early February, saying it had been used to attack AFC\/M23 positions and civilians in areas under its control.<\/p>\n
AFC\/M23 controls swathes of eastern Congo after a rapid offensive last year in which it seized the strategic cities of Goma and Bukavu. Rwanda denies backing the rebels.<\/p>\n
AFC\/M23 could not immediately be reached for comment on the latest attack.<\/p>\n
The government of Tshopo province, where Kisangani is located, said four kamikaze drones were intercepted and shot down near the airport between Sunday afternoon and early evening, some as a passenger aircraft was preparing to land. It did not report any damage or casualties.<\/p>\n
It was not clear whether any other drones had hit targets, and Tshopo’s governor did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
A Reuters witness at the airport heard several explosions throughout Sunday afternoon and bursts of gunfire that sent staff, vendors and nearby residents fleeing. Operations resumed in the evening.<\/p>\n
Fighting has continued in eastern Congo in recent weeks on several fronts, despite mediation efforts by parties including Qatar and the United States.<\/p>\n
Last Tuesday, Congo’s army killed AFC\/M23 spokesperson Willy Ngoma, one of the group\u2019s most visible figures, in\u00a0a drone strike\u00a0near the coltan-mining town of Rubaya.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Drones have attacked the airport serving Kisangani, a strategic city in northeast Democratic Republic of Congo far from active front lines in the east, local officials said on Monday, blaming the AFC\/M23 rebel group and neighbouring Rwanda. AFC\/M23, which U.N. experts say is backed by Rwanda, launched drones at the airport\u00a0in early February, saying it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":20045,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":13,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,2362,1129],"tags":[4828,3016,4922,140],"class_list":["post-20044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-central-africa","category-featured","category-security","tag-afc-m23-rebels","tag-democratic-republic-of-congo-drc","tag-kisangani","tag-rwanda"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20044"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20044\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20046,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20044\/revisions\/20046"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}