The Ugandan army claimed on Tuesday that it had killed 54 Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) fighters during an air raid on Monday in southern Sudan.
”Yesterday [Monday] at around 5pm we located a group headed by rebel commanders Odhiambo and Lakony, we pounded the group and managed to put out of action 54 of them, whose bodies our ground forces counted,” army spokesperson Shaban Bantariza said by telephone.
Bantariza said the aerial bombardment took place about 60km north of the Uganda-Sudan border.
Since 2002 the Khartoum government, which has long been accused of harbouring and arming the rebel group, has allowed Ugandan forces to conduct operations against the LRA in parts of southern Sudan.
Bantariza said the LRA group targeted in Monday’s raid was based well inside Sudan, beyond the Ugandan army’s permitted sphere of operations.
The army’s claim could not be independently confirmed.
No reaction was available from the LRA, which has no spokesperson and hardly any links to the outside world.
The rebel group has gained infamy for its human rights abuses.
It tends to swell it ranks by raiding camps for displaced people in northern Uganda and kidnapping children living there, forcing the boys into combat and the girls into sexual slavery. — Sapa-AFP