Rebels slice off woman's lips

2005-03-22 20:31

Gulu, Uganda - Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels killed four civilians, sliced off a woman's lips and took several captives in a raid near a refugee camp in northern Uganda on Tuesday, officials said.

The incident took place in the village of Paicho, about 20km northeast of the region's main city of Gulu, a Roman Catholic official told reporters.

Attacks on civilian targets continue on a near daily basis in the region, despite a government claim that insurgent numbers have dwindled and that the war was near its end.

The latest attack occurred near a displaced people's camp, an army spokesperson said.

The rebels also took an unknown number of captives, a United Nations official in Gulu added.

"This is a planting season, so many people venture out of the camps to try and work on their fields, but these ones were found in the fields before they were killed," the official said.

Based on Ten Commandments

The LRA, which operates from bases in northern Uganda and southern Sudan, has been fighting President Yoweri Museveni's secular government since 1988, ostensibly to replace it with one based on the biblical Ten Commandments.

Several attempts to sign a truce and launch formal peace talks have failed amid growing mistrust between the warring sides.

More than more than 1.6 million people have been displaced from their homes and are living in squalid camps in northern Uganda.

The rebel group swells its ranks by raiding camps for displaced people and kidnapping children living there, forcing the boys into combat, the girls into sexual slavery.

- AFP