21 LRA rebels killed in fresh fighting in the north - army

The Ugandan army said on Wednesday it had killed 21 fighters of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in renewed fighting in the north of the country and captured a son of LRA leader Joseph Kony, among others. Maj Shaban Bantariza, spokesman for the Uganda People's Defence Forces (UPDF), told IRIN that some of the rebels were killed on Tuesday evening as the army fought a group of rebels that had just entered the country from southern Sudan, headed by Kony. "At around 10 o'clock we engaged the group in Okidi hills in Gulu district and killed seven of them. We captured 12, including Kony's son, an indication that the rebel leader was in that group because his son would not travel with another group," Bantariza said. According to Bantariza, the rebels, who had been camped in southern Sudan, entered Uganda through the border district of Kitgum on Monday, then walked further south into Gulu district. "We killed 14 rebels yesterday [Tuesday] in three different encounters in Kitgum and Pader district," Lt Chris Magezi, Kitgum-based army spokesman, had told IRIN by phone from Kitgum on Wednesday. Eight of the rebels, he said, had been killed in Ayuwe Alali area while three were killed in another encounter in Padwat in Parabek sub-county, some 32 km northwest of Kitgum town. There had been relative calm in most of the northern region, except for some isolated attacks by the LRA. The calmness prompted Ugandan President, Yoweri Museveni, to declare last week that the LRA war had virtually been won and that the army was gong to concentrate on disarming lawless "warriors" in northeastern Karamoja region. Museveni, who visited the region last week, had said at a rally in Moroto town that the disarmament of the "warriors" had been suspended in order to attend to the LRA problem, but "since the LRA banditry has now been totally defeated, attention is to be refocused on the disarmament exercise in the region". But the United Nations Children's Fund ( UNICEF), warned in a statement on Wednesday that although there were signs of attenuation in the conflict, accentuated by incidents of low-to-mid-rank LRA commanders being captured by or surrendering to the UPDF, "there are no clear indications of a swift resolution to the conflict." The LRA has fought against the government in northern Uganda since 1988. The rebel group is notorious for its brutality and total absence of a public political face. It has abducted thousands of children to fight for it or to provide sexual services, and displaced 1.6 million people.