Ban slams LRA over killings

2008-12-31 07:15

Geneva - UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday condemned Uganda's rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) for their alleged role in massacres in the Democratic Republic of Congo and southern Sudan.

The Catholic charity Caritas said the LRA had killed more than 400 people in Christmas massacres in the Haut-Uele district of northeastern Congo, which shares a border with Uganda.

Ban "condemns in the strongest possible terms the appalling atrocities reportedly committed by the Lord's Resistance Army in recent days in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and southern Sudan, as well as all other attacks committed by the LRA", his press office said in a statement.

Ban "demands that the LRA respect all rules of international humanitarian law".

The UN leader reaffirmed his support for the December 22 presidential statement of the United Nations Security Council, where the Council "welcomed the joint measures taken by Uganda, DRC and southern Sudan to address the security threat posed by the LRA".

The rebels denied any responsibility and accused troops from Congo, Uganda and southern Sudan of "bombing" the victims.

Earlier in December, the governments of those three countries launched an unprecedented joint military offensive against the LRA, whose leader Joseph Kony has repeatedly backed out of a peace deal with Kampala.

The three powers, on whose borders Kony and his followers have been hiding, failed to kill or capture the LRA leader, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court on a series of war crimes charges.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed and nearly two million displaced in Uganda in two decades of fighting between the Ugandan government and the LRA, which is notorious for abductions of children to be used as soldiers and sex slaves.

- AFP