Ugandan army, SPLA launch joint operation against LRA rebels

Oct. 18, 2005 (KAMPALA) — The Uganda People’ s Defense Force (UPDF) and the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) have launched a joint operation against the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels who ambushed a UPDF convoy in southern Sudan on Friday, local press reported on Tuesday.

SPLA sources from the southern Sudanese town of Yei were quotedby The New Vision as saying that the army had for the last three days engaged both ground troops and helicopter gunships to hunt about 40 LRA rebels who killed UPDF and SPLA soldiers.

By Monday afternoon, the army had intensified the battle on theSudan-Congo border, after receiving information that LRA deputy chief Vincent Otti commanded the October 14 ambush on the convoy of the UPDF 79th battalion commanding officer Lt. Col. John Byoma.

The double-cabin pick-up truck that Byoma and the battalion’s intelligence officers were traveling in was hit and set ablaze by a rocket propelled grenade.

The army had originally put the figure of the dead UPDF at two but a highly-placed source said that two SPLA and four UPDF soldiers were killed in the attack.

A group of LRA rebels led by Otti, who crossed into the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in mid-September, were struggling to cross back to their original bases in southern Sudan.

LRA rebels have killed over tens of thousands of civilians and displaced over 1.4 million people in their 19-year-old rebellion in northern Uganda.

(Xinhua)