Ugandan government troops on Thursday scouted the volatile north of the country after the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) refused to renew a ceasefire that ran out at midnight local time.
”The situation is calm, we have not heard of any incident,” said army spokesperson Lieutenant Chris Magezi.
”But we are still very vigilant,” he told Agence France-Presse (AFP) by telephone from northern Uganda, where the army has its largest concentration of troops.
The military was hunting for suspected LRA rebels believed to be hiding in the area, as well as protecting local villages and camps housing up to two million displaced people, Magezi said.
President Yoweri Museveni threatened to attack any rebels on Ugandan soil once the truce ran out, and the rebels vowed they would retaliate if attacked.
Rebel deputy commander Vincent Otti told AFP on Wednesday that his fighters, scattered in northern Uganda, southern Sudan and eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, were on alert for possible ambushes from government troops.
The rebels pulled out of peace talks in south Sudan’s capital Juba in December, requesting a new venue and mediation after they lost trust in the southern Sudanese mediators, a move Kampala dismissed as a time-wasting ploy.
The ceasefire, signed in August and renewed last December, had raised hopes of an end to a conflict that has killed tens of thousands and displaced about two million others.
It was the only significant achievement the talks achieved since opening in July.
The LRA took over a two-year-old rebellion in 1988 in a bid to overthrow Museveni, but its insurgency has been marked by horrendous brutality against civilians, prompting the International Criminal Court to indict the movement’s supremo Joseph Kony, Otti and three other top commanders. — AFP
