{UAH} HOW CAN A REBEL GROUP ALREADY LINKED TO AL QAEDA DREAM OF RULING UGANDA"

Ugandan Al Qaeda-Linked ADF Rebels Ambush UN Convoy in Congo

KAMPALA, Uganda--Uganda's Al Qaeda-linked Allied Democratic Forces rebels on Monday ambushed a United Nations peace-keeping convoy, as militant attacks spread in the mineral-rich but lawless eastern Congo ahead of the planned deployment of a new UN peace-enforcement brigade.

The attack on the UN convoy, comprising of Nepalese and Jordanian troops, left two UN vehicles damaged. The peace keepers managed to repel the attack but couldn't continue to the town of Kamango, which has been a scene of deadly clashes between the Congolese army and the ADF rebels since last week, the UN mission in Congo, known as Monusco, said in an emailed statement.

"Monusco reaffirms that any attack on peace keepers is considered a war crime and warns anyone involved in such an action that they will be answerable before international justice," Monusco said in a statement, adding that another patrol would head to Kamango on Tuesday "in order to pursue the objectives of the original patrol."

Monusco didn't reveal details on casualties, but the UN-sponsored Radio Okapi reported that at least two peace keepers were wounded in the attack.

The attack was the first by the ADF on UN peace keepers in eastern Congo, underscoring the worsening violence. The attack came just a few days after clashes between the ADF and the Congolese army forced some 70,000 Congolese refugees to cross into Uganda's oil region, overwhelming humanitarian facilities. More than a dozen people have been killed and hundreds abducted by the ADF since Thursday, according to aid officials.

The ADF, a Ugandan rebel group formed by Islamic militants in the late 1990s, has maintained rear bases in eastern Congo since 2005 after being routed from western Uganda. The group says it is fighting to install an Islamic state in Uganda.

The Ugandan military over the weekend scrambled troop carriers and tanks to the border region to avert a possible rebel incursion, military officials said. Lieutenant Colonel Paddy Ankunda, the Ugandan military spokesman, said Uganda isn't "taking any chances" with the ADF, which infiltrated the country's oil region in 2007, with the intention of disrupting exploration activities.

Oil companies are in the process of exploiting Uganda's vast oil fields, which are estimated to contain around 3.5 billion barrels of crude.

Write to Nicholas Bariyo at nicholas.bariyo@dowjones.com

___________________________________

Gwokto La'Kitgum