Ugandan rebels attack Sudan

2005-09-15 14:53

Kampala - Rebels fighting a 19-year insurgency in northern Uganda have attacked villages in neighbouring Sudan's south, abducting an unknown number of people, burning houses and looting, said a Sudanese official on Thursday.

George Riak of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement said an unknown number of Lord's Resistance Army rebels raided several villages on Tuesday along a road leading to Juba.

Riak said: "I don't know of any killings, but they burned down dozens of houses.

"They concentrated on looting and abducting people. The Sudan People's Liberation Army is pursuing them and trying to locate their hide-out."

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Army spokesperson lieutenant colonel Shaban Bantariza said he could not confirm the attacks.

The Lord's Resistance Army was made up of the remnants of a northern rebellion that begun after President Yoweri Museveni, a southerner, took power in 1986.

It held no territory and was best known for kidnapping thousands of children and forcing them to become soldiers or sex slaves.

The rebel force once had the support of Sudan, which had allowed it to use Sudanese territory as a rear base, because Uganda supported the then rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement.

Since a peace agreement was signed in January between the former southern Sudanese rebel group and the Sudanese government, Sudanese officials had been discussing with Uganda how to end the northern Uganda rebellion.

- AP