Sudanese SPLA confirms fierce battles against Ugandan LRA

KAMPALA, March 4 (AFP) — The rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) said Thursday that it has had fierce battles against Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebel group in southern Sudan, during which two SPLA fighters were killed.

“A big group of LRA rebels was moving (south) towards the border with Uganda when they came across our defence lines,” SPLA representative in Uganda George Riek Machour told AFP by telephone in Kampala on Thursday.

“We fought back and chased them out, but they killed two of our fighters after they brought in reinforcements into the battle, which took place between Magwi and Toril in southern Sudan on Tuesday,” Machour said.

The SPLA reorganised and attacked them again, taking some of the LRA rebels prisoner, he added.

Machour said the LRA rebels have been killing civilians and looting food and cattle in the area and that during the Tuesday battle, they had been found driving a big herd of cattle towards the Ugandan border.

Machour claimed that the LRA rebels were killing more people in Sudan than in Uganda and that they have displaced thousands of people along the border.

Machour did not give the casualty figures for the LRA or how many SPLA had been taken prisoner, but said that the SPLA fighters were still pinning the Ugandans down.

The LRA has waged war in northern Uganda since 1988 in an attempt to topple President Yoweri Museveni’s government and replace it with one based in the biblical Ten Commandments.

They are, however, known for their brutality against northern Uganda’s civilian population and have since displaced over 1.2 million of them.

Two weeks ago, they killed more than 200 internally displaced persons at Barlonyo Camp near the northern Ugandan town of Lira.