Ugandan rebel leader in Sudan, setting up new rear bases: military

KAMPALA, Aug 25 (AFP) — Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebel leader Joseph Kony has crossed with up to 600 of his soldiers into southern Sudan, reports indicate the feared rebel group is setting up more rear bases, a Ugandan military official said Monday.

“We have information that (LRA leader Joseph Kony) crossed over with some fighters, but I don’t know the numbers,” Colonel Nathan Mugisha, commander of the 4th army division in northern Uganda told AFP by telephone from the northern capital, Gulu.

Lieutenant Chris Magezi, spokesman for the 5th army division, stationed nearby, said that Kony had crossed the border on Saturday morning at Nimulu bridge, on the boundary of Kitgum and Kotido districts.

“He dodged our units at the border and crossed over with a group of fighters, estimated at between 100 and 150, along with some of his senior commanders,” Magezi told AFP by telephone from Lira.

A rebel fighter who surrendered to the army but witnessed the group as it crossed over put the number of fighters at about 600.

Magezi told AFP that the army was ready to pursue Kony inside Sudan, where reports indicate that the LRA had established new camps.

“Kony wants to go back to Sudan, thinking that he will rest, but we are not giving him any break. We shall pursue him even where he has ran to,” he said.

The LRA has been fighting since 1988, ostensibly to replace President Yoweri Museveni’s government with an autocracy based on the biblical Ten Commandments, but their campaign has been marked with brutality against the civilian population.

Their brutality has killed or maimed thousands of people in northern Uganda, as well as displaced more than 800,000, currently forced to living in squalid camps dotting the region.