Ugandan army says kills at least 36 northern rebels

By Daniel Wallis

KAMPALA, June 22 (Reuters) – Ugandan troops killed at least 36 fighters from the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in two helicopter gunship attacks, averting a rebel plot to attack a civilian camp, Uganda’s military said on Tuesday.

Seventeen fighters from the group led by self-proclaimed mystic Joseph Kony were killed on Monday in the Kilak Hills in northern Uganda, said army spokesman Lieutenant Paddy Ankunda.

“They had been ordered by Kony to attack one of the internally displaced peoples’ camps, to kill civilians and to steal food,” he said, adding that a former rebel had warned Ugandan forces of an LRA plan to attack the camp.

In an earlier incident, Ankunda said 19 rebels were killed on Sunday in a helicopter gunship attack in Pader district.

The cult-like LRA has waged an 18-year-old war against the government of President Yoweri Museveni. It routinely targets civilians, slices off the lips and ears of its victims, and has abducted tens of thousands of children to serve as fighters, porters and sex slaves.

Repeated clashes and rebel raids have forced some 1.5 million people to flee their homes in remote districts of northern Uganda and move to squalid, makeshift refugee camps.

Ugandan government officials say the LRA is on its last legs and that new equipment such as gunships has helped quell the insurgency by allowing the military to quickly chase down rebels. But attacks on civilian targets have continued.

In the most recent attack, two people were killed on Saturday when rebels ambushed a convoy carrying aid supplies through northern Uganda to neighbouring southern Sudan.