Ugandan army claim killing of 12 rebels in north
Army spokesman Lieutenant Deo Akiiki said soldiers killed the insurgents late Monday in areas outlying Pader town, the headquarters of one of the northern Ugandan districts that have been ravaged by the rebellion.
“Yesterday evening between 4:00 and 5:00 pm (1300 GMT and 1400 GMT), we attacked a group of LRA rebels in the areas of Angakura, along Aswa river just west of Pader town and killed 12 of them,” Akiiki told AFP by phone from the northern town of Lira.
Akiiki said officers were verifying whether the dead included three rebel commanders.
A wife of a senior rebel commander and her seven-year old kid were also rescued from the insurgents during the raid that was carried out by a helicopter gunship and would be taken for counselling, the army said.
“She is very experienced and we expect assistance from her in form of information about the rebel group,” Akiiki added.
The LRA, which operates from bases in northern Uganda and southern Sudan, has been fighting President Yoweri Museveni’s secular government since 1988, vowing to replace it with one based on the biblical Ten Commandments.
They are best known, however, for atrocities against civilians and abducting villagers as bearers, child soldier conscripts and sex slaves.
The subsequent conflict has displaced more than 1.6 million people, who are living in squalid camps in northern Uganda.The Ugandan army said on that it had killed.
AFP/ST.