UN and Congolese forces have killed about 80 rebels in a week of joint operations and vowed to sustain the drive to bring peace to the violent east before next year’s elections, the UN said on Monday. A UN military spokesman said UN peacekeepers and Congolese government troops were pursuing Ugandan rebel fighters through the jungle after driving them from five camps south of Beni in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s North Kivu district. “It’s an ongoing operation, the Ugandan rebels are in full flight,” UN military spokesman Major Hans-Jakob Reichen told Reuters. Over the last week, joint Congolese/U.N. units had also staged two separate operations to flush out local Congolese militias that have refused to disarm and carried out attacks in Ituri district, which lies to the north of North Kivu. “Some 80 armed members of these ex-militia and rebel groups, both Congolese and Ugandan, have been killed in the last week,” Reichen said. The three operations had involved in all 1,000 UN troops supporting 6,000 Congolese government soldiers. Full Story