Army kills 15 rebels in weekend clashes

The Ugandan army said on Sunday it had killed 15 Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels in weekend clashes near Kitgum town in northern Uganda, as a church leader told IRIN the war in the north was yet to subside. Lt Chris Magezi, a Kitgum-based spokesman for the Uganda People's Defence Forces (UPDF) said seven LRA fighters, including a senior LRA intelligence officer, were killed in two separate battles in Kitgum district. "We rescued three abductees," Magezi told IRIN by telephone from Kitgum town. Two soldiers were wounded in the fighting in the areas of Lamwo county, he added. Maj Shaban Bantariza, a UPDF spokesman based in Kampala, told IRIN that a further eight rebel fighters were killed in fighting on Sunday when the military deployed aerial and ground forces to pound their positions in northern Gulu district. "We fought with a group commanded by LRA's deputy chief, Vincent Otti, in the areas of Kilak and we killed eight in that group, recovering five guns including a pistol. But we are still establishing the ownership of this pistol because it should have belonged to a commander of the group," Bantariza said by phone. Asked whether any abducted children were rescued in the latest fighting, Bantariza said the army had faced a group of hard-core fighters. "That is why we did not rescue anybody because they were all hard-core fighters," he said, adding that the army did not suffer any casualties. Bishop Baker Ochola, the retired bishop of Kitgum, told IRIN that while it was true that the LRA had been weakened militarily, "this was not reason enough to say that the war has ended". Ochola added: "In spite of the fact that there has been calm in Gulu, Kitgum and Pader districts have not been peaceful, though the intensity of the LRA activities has reduced." "The information we are getting is just one-sided, from the army. The civilians cannot talk much because the countryside is deserted. If the war is over as the army is telling the world, then with whom are they fighting?" he asked. The 18-year-old civil war in northern Uganda is a brutal one, pitting the army against the LRA, who say they are fighting to replace the government with a system ostensibly based on the Ten Commandments. But they are notorious for abducting children to serve as fighters or sex slaves to rebel commanders. Relief agencies estimate that up to 20,000 children have been abducted so far, many of them still unaccounted for. The war has displaced some 1.6 million people from their homes, who are currently living in camps dotting the region.