Child kidnappers killed
2005-03-19 15:30
Kampala - Seven Ugandan rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) were killed by the army after they had abducted some 50 children in the war-scarred north of the country, army sources said on Friday in Kampala.
The children had been kidnapped overnight in what UN sources in the area described as the biggest abduction in many months.
The rebels attacked and abducted many children from the village of Minakulu in Apac district, a Roman Catholic Church official in the nearby Gulu district said. He put the number of children kidnapped at over 20.
"The report we have got from a security source in the area indicates that up to 49 children were abducted and other details are still scanty, but we want to visit the area on Saturday morning to assess the situation," a United Nations official in the region said.
The army spokesperson in the region, Lieutenant Kiconco Tabaro, confirmed the incident and said the army had on Friday rescued ten children. He said he did have a figure of how many were abducted.
The army had earlier claimed having killed seven LRA fighters, including several senior commanders, and rescued 13 children from captivity in clashes late Thursday.
The fighting took place near the village of Odek, in the northern district of Gulu, the home area of LRA leader Joseph Kony and the epicentre of the Lord Resistance Army's 18-year war against the government, officials said.
In another encounter with LRA fighters near the main highway to northwestern Uganda, the army rescued 13 children abducted by the rebels and led by them into the jungle.
The army's claims could not be independently verified due to the remoteness of the area.
The notoriously brutal LRA has been fighting to topple Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni's secular government since the late 1980s, ostensibly to set up a regime based on the biblical Ten Commandments.
But the war has been marked by savage LRA attacks on civilians, with massacres, destruction of villages and the abduction of thousands of children for conscription into the rebel force or to serve as sex slaves.
Efforts to end the rebellion have thus far yielded no results although negotiations have been under way since the end of last year.
Tens of thousands have been killed and at least 1,6 million people displaced by the fighting.