Rebels of Uganda’s rebel group calling themselves the Lord’s Resistance Army killed three people at a displaced persons’ camp on the eve of the expiry of a unilateral government ceasefire, officials said on Tuesday.
A United Nations official and a Roman Catholic priest based near the Alokolum camp for the war displaced in Uganda’s northern Gulu district, said two people had also been seriously wounded and another abducted in the Monday attack.
”They attacked the camp … killed three men, beat two others into a coma and abducted another,” UN official Lars Erik Skaansar said by telphone from the region.
The priest said a church official who visited the camp on Tuesday reported that the rebels had launched the attack around 11pm (8pm GMT) on Monday, just hours before the government ceasefire was set to expire.
Ugandan President Yoweri Musevenu initiated the 18-day temporary ceasefire covering the Gulu and Kitgum districts on February 4 in a bid to breathe life into faltering peace talks with the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA).
The LRA has been fighting the Uganda government since 1988, ostensibly to replace Museveni’s secular government with one based on the Ten Commandments. Tens of thousands have been killed and at least 1,6-million peoplel have been displaced.
The rebel group is known for its brutality against the civilian population of the region, and relief agencies say it has abducted as many as 20 000 children for use as soldiers, porters and sex slaves.
Army spokesperson Major Shaban Bantariza said the rebels had intended by their attack on Monday to target the mother of Onen Kamdulu, a senior LRA commander who recently surrendered to the government.
Despite the attacks and expiry of the ceasefire, officials said the government was prepared to continue talking with the rebels whose ranks have been decimated by deaths, defections and surrenders in the past 14 months.
The chief government negotiator, Interior Minister Ruhakana Rugunda, who recently held the first face-to-face talks with the LRA in a decade, met on Tuesday in Guly with senior LRA fighters who have surrendered to the government in the recent days, officials said.
”I want to have the feel of the situation there and assess what should be the way forward,” he said on Tuesday.
According to Skaansar, Rugunda and junior security minister Betty Akech met former rebel commanders to discuss the on-again, off-again peace process and get an idea of the thinking of the remaining LRA leadership.
Among those they saw was senior rebel commander Sam Kolo who had been leading the LRA delegation at the peace talks, but who surrended to the government last week, throwing the negotiations into a state of uncertainty.
Skaansar, who has been working closely with the peace team, said the government had decided to use a dual approach of fighting and talking to the rebels, and had declined to extend the ceasefire further.
”They are going to use the surrendering commanders to talk to others remaining in the bush using a local radio station,” he said.
”They want them to continue talking to them so that they embrace the amnesty which is still in place.”
Ugandan Information Minister Nsaba Buturo said on Tuesday that military operations would continue, but that the government was still pressing the LRA fighters — who officials say now number only about 400 — to surrender and take advantage of a government amnesty.
”They have nothing to fear because their former commanders who have surrendered to us have been well treated and we are ready to receive and welcome them,” he said. – Sapa-AFP