Kampala | Monday
UP to 60 mourners have been shot dead in southern Sudan by suspected Ugandan rebels who forced them to eat a dead body they were about to bury, the Ugandan army charged on Sunday.
Army representative Major Shaban Bantariza said that the attack took place on Friday on the ranges of mountain Agoro, which straddles the Uganda, Sudan border.
“The LRA (Lord’s Resistance Army) attacked them as they were about to bury a person,” Bantariza said, adding that Ugandan forces battling the rebels in the area gave the report.
“At gun point they forced them to cut to pieces the dead body and ordered them to mix the (human) meat with the sorghum they were cooking. They were forced to eat it before 60 of them were shot dead,” Bantariza added.
He said that frightened locals fled the area and sought refugee at camps of the Sudanese army nearby.
No independent confirmation of the incident has been obtained.
Bantariza said the rebels turned against the locals because they could not get their support.
“The rebels asked for their support, but when they (the rebels) started eating their cows and food, they abandoned them,” Bantariza explained.
The rebels have been entrenched in the mountainous areas near the border where the Ugandan army (UPDF) has said it is besieging them.
On March 10 Uganda and Sudan signed an agreement allowing the UPDF to deploy in Sudanese territory to carry out search and destroy operations against the LRA rebels which operate rearguard bases there.
Sudan’s decision to allow Uganda to pursue rebels into its territory marked a considerable improvement in relations between the two former foes.
Since the operation started on March 28, the UPDF has overrun a number of bases, capturing a large amount of arms and forcing the rebel army to flee towards the south in the mountainous terrain near the border.
Kampala previously accused Khartoum of supporting the LRA, which seek to oust President Yuweri Museveni’s government and replace it with one that follows the biblical Ten Commandments.
Sudan counter-accused Uganda of supporting John Garang’s rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), which has been fighting against Khartoum since 1983 to end domination of the Christian and animist south by the Arabised, Muslim north. – AFP