Gunmen kill five in south Sudan – police
July 5, 2006 (JUBA) — Unknown gunmen killed five civilians close to the town of Juba in south Sudan on Wednesday, a police source said, a week before peace talks between Ugandan officials and rebels are due to start.
Initial reports said all were Sudanese nationals except for a Kenyan driver of their vehicle.
Police could not confirm if the gunmen were from the Ugandan rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA).
The attack comes less than a month after a south Sudan army officer accused LRA gunmen of killing nine people including Russians working for a road construction company on the outskirts of Juba. The LRA denied carrying out the attack.
The LRA, which operates from south Sudan and other countries bordering Uganda, had agreed to stop attacks and take part in talks brokered by south Sudan. Some LRA guerrillas are not under the control of the LRA leadership.
On Wednesday the LRA spokesman in Juba, Obonyo Olweny, said talks would begin on July 12 in the south Sudan capital.
“We will definitely start the talks next Wednesday,” he said. The southern Sudanese mediators had said they would consult with the LRA before announcing a date for the talks due to begin next week.
The group has terrorised remote communities in Uganda and neighbouring Sudan, targeting unarmed civilians and mutilating victims, often by slicing off their lips and ears. It has also abducted some 25,000 children as fighters, porters and “wives”.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued its first arrest warrants last year for LRA leader Joseph Kony and four of his top commanders.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has offered Kony an amnesty if the talks are successful.
Olweny said the ICC warrants would be discussed in the talks. But he dismissed Museveni’s amnesty offer as irrelevant.
“When we go for negotiations we negotiated as equal persons on the table so it is … redundant for the president of Uganda to come out and say we are offering amnesty to the LRA leaders,” he told Reuters in Juba.
One of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, the conflict in northern Uganda has forced more than 1.6 million from their homes over two decades.
(Reuters)