Uganda officials investigate killings in south Sudan

Februray 10, 2008 (KAMPALA) — Officials at the Uganda peace talks in southern Sudan are investigating a report that Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels killed dozens of people in recent attacks in the region, the Ugandan military said on Sunday.

Uganda’s army spokesman, Captain Paddy Ankunda, said a senior official from south Sudan’s Western Equatorial state, Joseph Ngere, complained to Uganda’s government about the raids.

“The deputy governor has protested to Uganda that the LRA has killed dozens of people in his province,” Ankunda said.

“We had earlier got the same information that the LRA has killed people. The Cessation of Hostilities team is investigating these claims and if true, that will be a violation of the truce agreement,” he told Reuters in Kampala.

The Cessation of Hostilities team is composed of officers from Uganda, the LRA and south Sudanese authorities.

The LRA spokesman and chief rebel negotiator at the peace talks in Juba, South Sudan’s capital, David Nyekorach-Matsanga, could not immediately be reached for comment.

The Ugandan government and the LRA rebels resumed peace talks in January, signing a one-month extension to a cessation of hostilities agreement. Kampala has given LRA leader Joseph Kony until Feb. 28 to sign a peace deal or risk a return to war.

A week ago, local government officials and a church group in southern Sudan said suspected LRA fighters had killed at least four people and abducted another 13 in a Jan. 29 attack on Nyepo village, some 120 km (75 miles) from Juba.

A joint report following a visit to the area by the Danish Refugee Council, local government and the church group quoted survivors of the attack as saying it was carried out between 300 to 500 armed men and women carrying rifles and machine guns.

The report, seen by Reuters, added that the attackers were “suspected rebels of Lord’s Resistance Army”. South Sudan’s army spokesman Peter Daniel said at the time that it was not clear who carried out the attack, and that LRA denied it.

During decades of civil war in neighbouring Sudan, the LRA took refuge in the lawless south. But with a 2005 Sudanese peace deal the Ugandan guerrillas lost their hiding place as the south began to rebuild under a semi-autonomous government.

A spate of attacks, blamed on the LRA but never confirmed, plagued the opening in mid-2006 of the peace talks between Kampala and Kony’s rebels.

The negotiations have raised hopes of an end to a war that has killed tens of thousands and uprooted two million more.

(Reuters)