Congo hostages freed

UN and Congolese forces have freed the hostages in a joint offensive on the Ugandan rebel movement Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), said a senior official on Monday.

"We are still taking in several hostages," the administrator of the Beni territory in the eastern province of North Kivu, Bernard Amisi Kalonda, told AFP. "We have already reached more than 250 people who have returned to their places. Most of them are women and children."

However, there are large discrepancies in reports of the number of people freed since January.

Chairman of Beni's civil society group, Teddy Kataliko, said that the number of people freed in that time is in fact much lower, at just 97.

The civil society group also said that the ADF has almost 900 captives. But authorities say at least 600 people were abducted between 2010 and 2013 by the ADF, many of whom are thought to have been executed.

Local authorities and representatives of civil society now plan to compare their figures to make sense of wide discrepancies in the number of people freed, as well as the number of people still held hostage by the ADF.

The offensive against the ADF began in January. During the fighting, Congolese hostages fled the Ugandan rebel camps and were later found in a state of advanced malnutrition.

Kataliko also said that several of the female hostages had "been forced to become the wives of rebels."

To avoid social stigma "some came out of the bush pregnant and hid on their return," he added.

Young men abducted by the ADF rebels are often recruited as child soldiers.

The ADF, who finance their activities by trafficking in tropical timber and gold, was established in the 1990s to fight against to regime of Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni, who the rebel movement has accused of having an anti-Muslim agenda.

In 2001, the UN Security Council added the ADF to its list of terrorist organizations and last month imposed sanctions including a ban on travel and assets, and an arms embargo.

The ADF's Christian-turned-Muslim leader, Jamil Mukulu is wanted by Interpol and is accused of crimes including murder, looting and enlisting child soldiers.

kb/dr (dpa, AFP)