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LRA killed at least 300 Sudanese villagers, says UPDF

Members of the Ugandan rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and their leader, Joseph Kony, have killed up to 300 civilians in southern Sudan in the past week, in retaliation for their refusal to support the insurgent group, according to a senior Ugandan army spokesperson. Shaban Bantariza, the Uganda People's Defence Forces (UPDF) Director of Information and Public Relations, told IRIN on Friday that the LRA had in the past week been "carrying out ritual killings in different places", similar to the earlier alleged massacre of 60 mourners in the Agoro Mountains, not far from the Ugandan border. "Kony has been killing in different places," he said. "The numbers are soaring. Right now we know they can't be less than 300." A Sudanese diplomat in Kampala, the Ugandan capital, and officials of the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), which operates in southern Sudan, have said, however, that they could not verify whether these alleged incidents had actually happened. George Garang, a spokesman for the SPLM/A in Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, told IRIN on Friday that the movement had little to say by way of clarifying the issue. "We have no information on what is happening other than that there have been civilian deaths. As to who is killing them, we really don't have any idea," Garang said. Bantariza said he had on Thursday sent a group of local and international journalists to the areas where the incidents reportedly happened to "verify the truth for themselves". According to him, Kony had turned against the southern Sudanese civilians for refusing to support his movement with food and cattle. "The simple reason why Kony is doing these things is because he is annoyed and desperate," he said. "The villagers have plenty of food and animals, which Kony wants, but they have refused to sustain a Ugandan rebellion. So he is trying to subdue them and eat their food." Earlier this week, local and international media organisations reported that, on 26 April, a group of armed LRA fighters had intercepted a funeral procession and shot dead all 60 mourners. Quoting Bantariza, the agencies said the attack had taken place in the Agoro Mountains, which straddle the Sudan-Ugandan border and where the rebels had taken refuge from the Ugandan army offensive, being carried out with permission from Khartoum and dubbed "Operation Iron Fist". "Kony attacked a funeral procession of about 60 people, forced them to cook the corpse in sorghum and eat it. They thought that they would survive if they obeyed, but the rebels shot and killed all of them after they had eaten the corpse," Reuters quoted Bantariza as saying. Siraj al-Din Hamid, the charge d'affaires at the Sudanese embassy in Kampala, the Ugandan capital, told IRIN on Tuesday he had not yet received any official response regarding the incident from the Sudanese government. "I can't confirm it yet," he said. "I only saw reports of it in the newspapers. I haven't yet received any reaction from Khartoum." "If this is true, it is a horrible and horrendous crime which justifies the [Uganda and Sudanese army] activities against Kony and the LRA," Hamid added. Until recently - and with support from the Khartoum in retaliation for Kampala's alleged support for the SPLM/A - the LRA has been waging a low-intensity war against President Yoweri Museveni's government in northern Uganda. The war, has resulted in severe humanitarian consequences in northern Uganda, where the LRA has abducted about 12,000 children and caused the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people, according to humanitarian sources. [see also However, recent months have seen significant improvements in relations between Sudan and Uganda, resulting in the withdrawal of Khartoum's support for the LRA and the signing of a defence protocol in March this year which has allowed the UPDF to pursue LRA inside Sudanese territory.

This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions

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