Kisangani – Democratic Republic of Congo security forces have rebuffed a drone strike on a strategic airport, the second attack in a month on the facility to be claimed by the M23 armed group, regional authorities said on Monday.
It said there were no casualties, while M23 acknowledged it was behind the attack.
The DRC’s mineral-rich east has been devastated by three decades of conflict, including the ongoing fighting between the Rwanda-backed M23 and the Congolese army.
Bangboka airport is used by civilian and military planes.
The Congolese army uses its runway to launch attack drones and fighter planes against M23 and Rwandan army positions in the DRC.
The drone attack came at four intervals, starting in the mid-afternoon. The last targeted the airport just as a civilian plane belonging to the Compagnie Africaine d’Aviation (CAA) was preparing its landing approach, the provincial authorities said.
M23 said in a statement that it carried out a “targeted operation” to “neutralise and destroy drones that were about to be launched to massacre civilians and attack our positions”.
The group threatened new operations unless government forces halted their offensives.
M23 reappeared at the end of 2021 and has since seized vast areas of the mineral-rich eastern DRC.
Bangboka was also the target of a drone attack between January 31 and February 1, claimed by the M23, which said it had destroyed the airport’s military drone command centre.
The warring parties in the eastern DRC regularly accuse each other of using drones for attacks in densely populated areas.
On Saturday, the M23 said a Congolese army drone had killed its military spokesman.
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Source: AFP
