Uganda army says kills 32 LRA rebels in Sudan

By Daniel Wallis

KAMPALA, June 12 (Reuters) – Ugandan troops killed 32 rebels from the shadowy Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in a helicopter gunship attack in neighbouring southern Sudan, an army spokesman said on Saturday.

The report, which could not be immediately verified because of the remoteness of the area, came just days after the cult-like LRA was accused of killing at least 41 villagers in another part of lawless southern Sudan.

“We found them yesterday on the Juba-to-Nisito road and killed 32 of them,” said Lieutenant Paddy Ankunda, army spokesman for northern Uganda.

Twenty captives, mostly children, were rescued from the rebels, he said. No Ugandan troops were hurt in the clash that took place some 90 km (55 miles) inside Sudan.

“Some of those that survived the air raid fled, dropping many looted food items which our infantry collected,” he added.

In 2002 the Khartoum and Kampala governments struck a deal to let Ugandan troops pursue LRA members across the border into southern Sudan.

The LRA, led by self-proclaimed prophet and former altar boy Joseph Kony who is believed to live in southern Sudan, has waged a civil war against the government of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni for 18 years.

The group is notorious for its brutality, routinely targeting civilians, mutilating its victims and abducting tens of thousands of children as fighters, porters and sex slaves.

Most Ugandans say the group appears to have no clear aims or political objectives, but repeated clashes and raids have forced some 1.6 million people to flee their homes in northern Uganda and move to more than 60 squalid refugee camps.

The United Nations said in a report released on Friday that in the past month the LRA had killed 125 people at camps within Uganda for displaced people.

In southern Sudan, a local Anglican church leader said the LRA killed at least 41 people on Tuesday. He accused the Khartoum government of supporting the rebel group, a charge Sudanese officials have consistently denied.

Despite the attacks on refugee camps in northern Uganda in recent weeks government officials continue to say they are winning the war.

Museveni told parliament recently that between January 2004 and the end of May, troops killed 781 LRA rebels, including 41 commanders. A further 372 had surrendered, including 52 commanders, and 179 were taken prisoner.

Ugandan forces had also freed 1,565 abductees, he said.