Sudan rebels say they killed 86 Ugandan insurgents
By Paul Busharizi
KAMPALA, March 5 (Reuters) – Sudanese rebels killed 86 members of Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in fighting that broke out after the guerrilla group committed its worst massacre in years, a Sudanese rebel spokesman said on Friday.
The Sudanese rebels said they had fought more than a week of skirmishes with the LRA in southern Sudan, where the Ugandan movement has long maintained rear bases used to attack villagers in their home country.
LRA rebels shot, hacked and burnt to death more than 230 civilians in northern Uganda in one of their worst mass killings in a 17-year-old insurgency last month, according to a death toll given by local officials.
Sudanese rebels, who have often clashed with the LRA over control of parts of southern Sudan, said the latest fighting had been triggered by LRA attacks on their positions south of Juba, the main town in south Sudan.
“The fighting is still going on,” said George Riek Machar, spokesman for the Sudan People’s Liberation Army. “We have been fighting for the last eight days south of Juba against a force commanded by LRA second-in-command Vincent Otti,” he said.
The LRA, which roams the forests and swamps of northern Uganda, is difficult to contact for comment. It is also hard to verify reports of fighting in lawless southern Sudan.
Machar said the LRA were being resupplied from Torit, a southern Sudanese town controlled by Sudanese government forces, but stopped short of accusing Khartoum of supporting the rebels.
Uganda and Sudan had for years exchanged accusations of backing each other’s rebels, until they struck a deal in March 2002 to allow Ugandan forces to pursue the LRA into southern Sudan. The deal was again extended this week until May 31.
The LRA, led by altar boy turned mystic Joseph Kony, are notorious for abducting children for use as sex slaves and child soldiers and maiming or massacring civilians. The conflict has forced 1.4 million people to flee their homes in northern Uganda.
Separately, a smaller Sudanese rebel group said they had launched an offensive to crush the LRA, saying the group would prevent peace taking hold in southern Sudan despite progress at talks between the Khartoum government and southern rebels.
Theophilous Ochang Lotti, the chairman of the Equatoria Defence Force, also said his group had merged with the larger SPLA, saying progress at the peace talks had narrowed differences between the former rebel rivals.
“We have launched operations to crush the LRA in southern Sudan,” Lotti told a news conference in Nairobi, capital of neighouring Kenya, which is hosting the peace talks.
“So long as the LRA occupy southern Sudan, there will be no peace in Sudan even if we sign a peace agreement,” Lotti said.
The war between Sudan’s government and southern rebels has led to the deaths of an estimated two million people in a conflict complicated by religion, oil, ethnicity and ideology.
(Additional reporting by Wangui Kanina in Nairobi)