The UPDF and DRC forces are searching for the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) supreme leader, Musa Baluku.
The development comes days after the joint forces launched aerial and artillery bombardments of ADF-controlled territory in North Kivu, eastern DRC on November, 30.
Defence officials said “Musa Baluku has not been heard from since the strikes on the camps.”
Musa Seka Baluku took over as the commander of the ADF following the 2015 arrest of its former leader, Jamil Mukulu, in Tanzania.
Baluku is under sanctions by the United Nations and the United States for terrorist activities.
But sources said Baluku’s whereabouts remain unclear amid the intense attacks on ADF camps.
“He is not communicating at all,” said a source who preferred anonymity to speak freely.
“So, either he is seriously wounded, dead or avoiding communicating in order not to be targeted.”
Baluku became a Salafi jihadist at an early age, and formerly served as an Imam at the Malakaz mosque in Kampala, Uganda.
Baluku was one of the earliest members of the Allied Democratic Forces, and served as one of Jamil Mukulu’s chief lieutenants.
After the ADF relocated to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mukulu appointed Baluku to numerous positions within the ADF, and he served as the group’s chief Islamic judge and handed down punishments to those who violated the group’s interpretation of Sharia law.
Baluku also served as the ADF’s “political commissar”, and was in charge of teaching the ADF’s ideology to new recruits.
When Jamil Mukulu was arrested in Tanzania in 2015, Musa Baluku took his place as commander of the ADF and appointed himself “Sheikh”.
Unlike his predecessor, Baluku has expanded his outreach into social media in order to recruit more followers,and has publicly aligned the ADF with better-known jihadist groups such as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and Al-Shabaab.
In September 2020, Baluku declared, “There is no ADF anymore. … [W]e are a province, the Central Africa Province which is one province among the numerous provinces that make up the Islamic State.”
The Mountain Division Commander Maj Gen Kayanja Muhanga said the military strikes focused mainly focus on weakening identified enemy camps in Yayuwa, Tondoli, Beni One and Beni Two.
