Sudan’s SPLA says Uganda’s LRA rebels kill 10 civilians

Dec 17, 2005 (CAIRO) — Ugandan rebels killed 10 civilians on their way back to Sudan from a market in Uganda, a Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) spokesman said on Saturday.

Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) fighters attacked the group about 7 km (4 miles) inside Sudan from its border with northern Uganda on Friday afternoon, said SPLA Colonel Cyprial Oeiongo, who was helping to bury the dead.

“People are confused and angry and want to retaliate,” he said, adding that one of 13 wounded had identified the attackers as members of LRA by the language they used.

The LRA, which has no clear political aims, has terrorised isolated north Ugandan communities for 19 years, uprooting more than 1.6 million people and triggering a humanitarian crisis for the east African nation. It has also struck in southern Sudan.

Led by self-proclaimed mystic Joseph Kony, the cult-like group is notorious for massacring civilians, mutilating survivors and kidnapping more than 20,000 children who are forced to serve as fighters, porters and sex slaves.

“It was horrible, most of the bodies were burned beyond recognition,” a witness to the aftermath of the attack said.

On Thursday the LRA shot dead eight people including a child in a daylight ambush in northern Uganda, the Ugandan army said.

In October the International Criminal Court unveiled its first arrest warrants for Kony and his top LRA deputies.

(Reuters)