Sudanese forces kill 4 Uganda rebels in south Sudan

June 25, 2006 (JUBA) — Sudan’s security forces last week killed four members of a Ugandan rebel group which has been raiding parts of southern Sudan, a Sudanese official said.

Clement Wani Konga, governor of Central Equatorial state, said members of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) had been raiding residential areas of the southern Sudanese state to seize food.

“Three of them where killed by the armed forces and the police … killed one, bringing the number to four,” he said late on Saturday.

South Sudan’s regional government says it wants to broker an end to 19 years of conflict between the LRA and the Ugandan government. The conflict has destabilised southern Sudan, itself recovering from more than two decades of civil war.

LRA representatives are waiting in Juba, the capital of south Sudan, to start talks with the Ugandan government.

Sudan’s government had used the LRA as a proxy to help fight the southern Sudanese rebels, who last year signed a peace treaty with Khartoum.

(Reuters)