JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – {South Africa said on Tuesday it was extending the deployment of members of its defense force taking part in a United Nations mission in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo by one year.}<\/p>\n
Almost 1,400 South African soldiers are taking part in the Force Intervention Brigade, part of the U.N. MONUSCO peacekeeping operation in the central African country.<\/p>\n
The intervention brigade has been given a special mandate to take on armed groups which have terrorised and created instability for years in the poor but mineral-rich region. <\/p>\n
In a brief statement, President Jacob Zuma’s office said the deployment “has now been extended to 31 March 2016”. <\/p>\n
U.N. and Congolese troops launched strikes in January against the remnants of a Burundian rebel group based in the rugged borderlands of eastern Congo.<\/p>\n
However, MONUSCO in February paused its support for a campaign against another rebel group — the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) — after Congo named to top posts two generals suspected of human rights violations.<\/p>\n
The operation is now going ahead without U.N. support.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – {South Africa said on Tuesday it was extending the deployment of members of its defense force taking part in a United Nations mission in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo by one year.} Almost 1,400 South African soldiers are taking part in the Force Intervention Brigade, part of the U.N. MONUSCO peacekeeping operation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2000068180,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[75],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-19116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-homenews","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":{"id":2000068180,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton19116.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton19116.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton19116.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton19116.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton19116.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton19116.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19116\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000068180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19116"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=19116"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=19116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}