Ugandan rebels abduct four civilian in South Sudan

May 21, 2007 (KHARTOUM) — UN Mission in Sudan has reported that a group of the Ugandan rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has recently abducted four civilians at a village in Central Equatoria state in southern Sudan.

The LRA, which has been waging a notorious insurgency in northern Uganda since 1986, has a record of abducting children and then using them as soldiers or porters, while subjecting some to torture and allocating many girls to senior officers in a form of institutional rape.

UNMIS said it learned of the recent abductions from the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), the former rebel group which is now involved in the Government of southern Sudan as part of a power-sharing deal after the end of the north-south civil war in early 2005.

A team of negotiators led by the Southern Sudanese Information Minister and an LRA Brigadier-General went to the area around Dimo, the village where the abductions occurred, on Saturday, to try to negotiate the release of the civilians.

(UN News)