Uganda rebels kill four in Sudan attack

KHARTOUM, March 14 (Reuters) – A Ugandan rebel group have killed four people and injured at least three others in an attack on a convoy in southern Sudan, a government official said on Monday.

The commissioner of the south Sudanese town of Juba was in the three-car convoy on Friday when the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) attacked, but he was not hurt, the minister for peace in south Sudan’s regional government told Reuters.

Joseph Duer said the wounded were brought to Khartoum for treatment. “The Lord’s Resistance Army launched an attack on civilian cars 25 km (16 miles) from Juba town and killed four people,” he said. He had no further details.

The Ugandan army has stationed troops in south Sudan to crack down on the LRA, where the rebel group has bases.

The LRA, which has fought a 19-year-long insurgency in Uganda, is known for targeting civilians, mutilating survivors and kidnapping tens of thousands of children who are forced to serve as fighters, porters and sex slaves.

It has launched a spate of attacks since their first talks with the government in a decade ended late last year without a breakthrough.

A peace deal signed in January ended more than two decades of civil war between Sudanese rebels and Khartoum in southern Sudan. The United Nations has agreed to send a peacekeeping force of 10,000 to southern Sudan to monitor the peace deal.