Rebels massacre family of 11 in weekend attack

Anti-government rebels used axes and machetes to kill 11 members of one family, including a six-month-old baby boy, in a village in northern Uganda's Lira District at the weekend, army and church sources said. Four children including the baby were at home with their parents and seven other relatives on Saturday evening when Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels attacked them. The children's parents escaped unhurt, but 10 of the people in the home were killed. One person was abducted but was killed later as the rebels retreated, Lira Resident District Commissioner Peter Lochap said. "A group of internally displaced persons decided to leave the camp and return to the villages without notifying anybody," army spokesman Major Shaban Bantariza told IRIN by phone. "These thugs [rebels] decided to attack them and killed eleven of them at Apungi village in Apara sub county, Lira district." Apungi is located some 40 kilometers east of Lira town, which lies about 360 kilometers north of the Ugandan capital, Kampala. Bantariza regretted the attack, saying that had the army known that a family had decided to abandon the camp and return to the isolated village, it would have persuaded them not to do so as "it was still dangerous to venture out there". He added: "Some remnants [of the LRA] are still roaming the villages in small numbers." A Roman Catholic Church missionary in Lira, Father John Fraser, confirmed that word of the incident had reached him. "I have heard about the attack and the killings by a small group of rebels who seem to have been looking for food," said Fraser, who is a member of the order of the Comboni Fathers. The LRA has been fighting the government of President Yoweri Museveni since 1988, in a campaign of violence that has forced over 1.6 million people from their homes into camps that dot the northern Ugandan countryside. Most of the displacees live in camps. The rebel group has gained infamy for atrocities against civilians. It has often abducted children, obliging the boys to fight in its ranks and forcing the girls to serve as porters or as the sex slaves of rebel commanders. The attacked village is near Abia camp for the displaced, the scene of a massacre earlier this year. Lira had been calm for some time now and it had been thought that peace was returning to the area.