Army denies Lira death toll

The Ugandan army has denied reports from local leaders in the country’s troubled northern Lira district that up to 70 bodies from Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) attacks have been recovered in the last week. “This figure is simply false," Lira-based army spokesman Lt Chris Magezi told IRIN. "We know the rebels killed four over this last weekend in a place near Okude, but our investigations in this area revealed nothing further. There is no way that there could be a killing on that scale and we fail to know.” Lira district chief Franco Ojur was quoted over the weekend as saying 70 bodies of people hacked to death by the LRA had been found in the bushes. Magezi said the LRA in Lira "doesn’t have the resources to orchestrate such a massacre”. Father Sebhat Ayele of Lira Catholic mission claimed the figure was correct, saying many of the bodies were decomposed and had probably been there for weeks. “They were found over a wide area near the scene of the latest attack and some were possibly up to three weeks old,” Ayele told IRIN. Lira district has been an LRA target since last month, after a number of LRA splinter groups started raiding villages close to Lira town for the first time in the 17 years since the insurgency began. The army says this is because they were forced out of Teso in east and Kitgum and Pader in the north by "intense pressure" from government forces. It says the LRA is trapped in Lira and taking out its frustrations on the civilian population.