Kony wives, children flown home from Sudan

Seventy seven former fighters of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), most of them child soldiers, were flown from Sudan on Wednesday to the northern Ugandan town of Gulu, together with four ex-wives of LRA rebel leader, Joseph Kony. Lt Paddy Ankunda, the Ugandan northern army spokesman told IRIN that 13 of Kony's children were on the flight. The repatriation, he added, was organised by the Ugandan government and aid agencies. Relief workers in Gulu, 360 km north of the capital Kampala, said there was excitement in the town before the plane arrived from the southern Sudanese town of Juba. "About a thousand people waited for about two hours at Gulu airport because the flight was delayed for two hours. There was huge excitement," Andrew John Timpson, head of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Gulu, told IRIN. Many of the fighters were coming to their home country for the first time, having been born in the jungles of southern Sudan where the LRA is said to have its bases. Ugandan military and government officials were at the airport to receive the returnees. Also at the airport was Kenneth Banya, a senior LRA commander who was captured recently by the army. The children were transferred to two rehabilitation centers in Gulu while the wives were temporarily retained in Gulu military barracks. Last week, the Ugandan army said it had killed over 120 LRA fighters during a surprise attack on the rebel headquarters at Bileniang about 200 km north of the Uganda-Sudan border, but the LRA leader, Joseph Kony, who was in the camp, survived the raid. On Wednesday, army spokesman Maj Shaban Bantariza told IRIN on phone: "They (Sudanese) gave our people seven days during which they would have either captured or killed Kony. The deadline is supposed to be 6 August. We are waiting and counting off." The LRA, which claims it wants to topple the Ugandan government and replace it with one based on the Biblical Commandments, has fought a brutal 18-year war in which it has habitually targeted children either for forced recruitment into its ranks or to turn into wives for its commanders. Up to 12,000 children, according to the United Nations Children's Fund, have been abducted by the rebels since June 2002. Approximately 44,000 children in Gulu, Kitgum and Pader Districts trek into towns each night from their villages to seek shelter from the threat of LRA attacks and abductions. Attempts by local leaders in the region to initiate dialogue between the LRA and the government have so far failed. The rebels are elusive while the government insists on a military solution to the conflict. Over the last few months, the army has captured several senior LRA commanders.