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UPDF clashes with LRA inside Sudan

The Uganda People's Defence Forces (UPDF) said on Sunday that they had killed at least 18 members of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) on Friday, during their first major contact with the Ugandan rebel force in a continuing campaign inside south Sudan. Sudan indicated in March that it had allowed the Ugandan army to operate against the LRA - which it had supported financially and militarily until recently - inside Sudanese territory for a limited period in order to "foster and maintain security across their common border". [see http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=26548] The UPDF-LRA clashes had occurred at Katire, in the Imatong Hills area between the garrison towns of Magwe and Torit in Eastern Equatoria (about 60 km from the Ugandan border), The New Vision government-owned newspaper on Monday quoted the UPDF spokesman, Shaban Bantariza, as saying. There is considerable confusion about casualties, since the independent Monitor newspaper quoted him as saying that 18 LRA fighters had been killed, while The New Vision put the number at 32, and the Associated Press quoted Bantariza as saying that the Ugandan army had counted 50 LRA bodies, one by one. "We are still searching the battle zones and blood trails," Bantariza told The New Vision. "The death toll may reach about 50." Five soldiers had been wounded on the UPDF side, he added. LRA forces initially attacked UPDF positions on Thursday 2 May, but were repulsed, according to Bantariza. When they returned on Friday, the battle lasted two hours in the late afternoon, The New Vision quoted him as saying. "Since we went to Sudan, Kony has avoided us," Bantariza told The New Vision. "We made them run around and round. Now they have started to attack us, because they are tired of running. I think we are nearing their hide-outs." There was no independent confirmation of the casualties or outcome of Friday's battle in the Imatong Hills - described as extremely difficult terrain for combat, with sharp peaks and heavily wooded - though diplomatic sources told IRIN that the incidence of serious clashes had been confirmed at a high level in Kampala, along with a significant number of fatalities on both sides. Uganda and Sudan said they would do all they could to assure the safety and secure the release of thousands of child abductees among the LRA forces, but the United Nations Children's Fund has expressed concern for the fate of the abductees (few of whom had been traced since the start of the UPDF's "Operation Iron Fist"), including those who may be caught up in fighting. The two countries are scheduled to hold a meeting of defence ministers on 17 May to determine whether or not the UPDF needs more time to complete its campaign against the LRA within Sudan. The current deadline for completion of the operation is 18 May. The anti-LRA campaign is considered an important test of recently improved Ugandan-Sudanese relations - both sides now having agreed to re-establish diplomatic relations at ambassadorial level - and the failure until last week of the UPDF to seriously confront the rebel force in southern Sudan had raised suspicions among some observers that Khartoum had not completely severed its ties with the LRA. Although the LRA was an outgrowth of the "spiritualist" movement of Alice Lakwena, which emerged in northern Uganda in the mid-1980s, by 1995 it began operating from Sudan with the support of the government there as Khartoum sought to get back at Uganda for its support of the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), according to observers. Conditions began to change in the wake of the 11 September 2001 events, the Washington-led international coalition against terrorism and Washington's classification of the LRA as a terrorist organisation. This, in turn, was instrumental in the government of Sudan ending its support for the organisation, diplomatic sources told IRIN. Sudan and Uganda agreed in late April to re-establish full diplomatic ties, which were severed in 1995 as each country accused the other of backing rebel groups, and to appoint full ambassadors in Khartoum and Kampala. [see Special Focus article ] Now, although no "special relationship" or significant neighbourly friendship is expected between the two countries in the near future, Sudan has stopped supporting the LRA, and overt military assistance from Uganda to the SPLM/A may have - or has - ceased, despite sustained sympathy for the rebel movement, according to regional analysts. Khartoum’s wish to reduce Kampala’s opposition, and the latter’s need to end the LRA insurgency in northern Uganda and from southern Sudan may mean the time is right for various modest improvements as they learned to coexist and to make necessary but minor adjustments, they added.

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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