Ugandan Rebels kill 19 civilians in Congo’s Orientale Province

By Richard Ruati

March 18, 2010 (Bangadi, DR) — At least 11 civilians and eight troops have died in attacks by Ugandan LRA rebels in the northeast of Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a local association said.

The attacks by the Lord’s Resistance Army rebels took place between March 11 and 14 in Bangadi, Duru and Dungu in Orientale province about 100 kilometers south of the border with the Central African Republic.

Aruna Sambia, chairman of a civil group in Dungu, told AFP that the dead included three members of one family, reports Capital FM.

Led by Joseph Kony, wanted along with two other leaders by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, the LRA took up arms in 1988 in northern Uganda and has acquired a reputation for brutality.

Since 2005, under pressure from the Ugandan army, the fighters pulled back from their bases in Uganda to move into the remote northeast of the DRC, where they were said to number less than 100 late last year, according to the UN mission in the DRC.

The notorious leader of the Lord Resistance Army (LRA) Joseph Kony may have relocated to Sudan’s Western of Darfur, the Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni said at a press conference in Kampala a week ago.

THE Sudanese army has denied reports that the feared leader of Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army rebel group has found refuge in the western region of Darfur.

“Central African republic allowed our troops to operate there. Our troops have been successfully hunting the LRA rebels and a good number of them have been killed. The rebels have been operating there in three small groups. The Ugandan troops operating there have told me that the group comprising Kony has fled into Darfur,” said Museveni according to Ugandan local media.

The Ugandan leader further said that he is not concerned if the intelligence turns out to be true because it means that the LRA figures have settled in Darfur far away from his country and sparing it the havoc they are known to create.

The fugitive LRA leader has been on the run since December 2008 when regional states launched a hunt to nab him after he refused to sign a peace deal with Kampala.

Since the operation, remnant LRA fighters have been moving in the jungles of northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo, south Sudan and the Central African Republic (CAR).

ST