LRA rebels confirms Ugandan army attack on its base in Congo

Jan 30, 2006 — The LRA/M would like to confirm that on Monday 23rd January 2006, a contingent of about 200 UN troops backed up by UK SAS, US Marines and UPDF attacked one of its tactical bases in the Garama National Park in the DR Congo. The said base was predominantly occupied by unarmed and innocent civilians – displaced women and children waiting for assistance from the local UN High Commission for Refugees office. The few LRA men who were guarding the camp put up a fierce resistance and initially repulsed the attackers outright. However, our forces made a tactical withdrawal when aerial bombardments started and more reinforcement arrived.

Following this attack, the LRA/M would like to report for the first time that more than 30 of these unarmed civilians were massacred and a dozen more were injured by the UN, SAS and US Marines in contravention of its obligation under the Geneva Conventions -“ Not to intentionally attack innocent civilians; civilian objects or facilities such as internally displaced peoples’ camps, and food distribution centers or relief operations or objects or facilities which are indispensable to the survival and sustenance of the civilian population and of civilian nature’. The LRA lost about a dozen of its patriotic and real men of honour and several more sustained serious injuries.

The LRA/M condemns in the strongest terms this most shocking and cowardly act of brutality and bombings of innocent civilians and their settlement by the UN peacekeeping troops in Eastern DR Congo. We would like further to call on the international community, especially the regional leaders of the East and Central African countries not just to condemn this massacre, but also to force the UN to call not just for an immediate and a thorough investigation into this covert operation, but also insist that those responsible to be severely reprimanded.

In the light of this revelation of the UN deliberate and most shocking and graphic massacre of unarmed civilians, we would like to appeal to all nations whose citizens are contributing to peacekeeping missions in the DRC to seriously reconsider future engagements with the UN. The LRA/M believes that the UN has already been hijacked by other interest groups and governments to carry out major covert interventionist and subversive operations with or without United States combat forces and logistical and intelligence support instead of the mandated peacekeeping missions in Africa. Since its inception, the LRA/M however, has neither deliberately targeted UN troops and many of its agencies nor considered them legitimate targets.

The LRA/M would also like to deny the recently reported allegation that there was an internal dispute within its ranks that led to a series of gun-battles in the said camp in the DR Congo. We consider this yet another of Museveni/UPDF manufactured propaganda meant to divert attention from the awful massacre of the innocent civilians by the combined UPDF, UN and Special UK and US forces.

We would further like to call on the AU and leaders of the regional governments in east and central Africa to petition the UN with regard to its conflicting peacekeeping missions mandate in the DRC. Most important of all, we call on fellow Ugandans and all their peace loving neighbours to unite to fight to remove the murderous and genocidal dictatorial regime of Yoweri Museveni – the cause and source of all the regional instabilities and killings of more than 6 million people in West Nile, Luwero Triangle and the DRC and in the genocides of Rwanda and Northern Uganda.

LRA/M Information Bureau.