Ugandan rebels committing grave rights abuses in DR Congo, UN reports

Since mid-September, the notorious Ugandan rebel group, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), has killed over 200 people, including 159 children, according to a new United Nations report.

A preliminary report issued by the UN Human Rights Office and the peacekeeping mission in the DRC, known as MONUC, said that in the past few weeks, LRA elements have carried out attacks on 16 areas in Dungu when 52 people were killed. An additional 159 children and 10 adults have been abducted and executed by the rebels.

During joint fact-finding mission to Dungu from 29 September to 8 October, the investigation team met with three children who escaped their abductors and with survivors, host families, and school and church officials.

“In all localities that suffered attacks, the LRA elements conducted a campaign of killing, systematic abduction of children, and burning of almost all houses,” the publication noted.

Simultaneous attacks on 17 September resulted in the populations of the villages of Duru, Kpiaka, Kiliwa and Madola – all less than 90 kilometres from Dungu, the area’s main town – being either killed or abducted.

Tens of thousands fled to Bangadi, more than 100 kilometres northwest of Dungu, the report said, while the population of the town of Gangadi has swelled from 10,000 to 25,000.

The report said these attacks could be “reprisals and dissuasive attacks aimed at preventing splits and desertions possibly underway within the LRA.”

It also suggested that they could be in response to the continued deployment in the region of Congolese armed forces (FARDC), supported by MONUC, “signalling the possibility of joint action against the LRA.”

Earlier this week, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported that at least 5,000 refugees from the DRC have arrived in South Sudan recently after fleeing “ferocious” LRA.

UNHCR spokesperson Ron Redmond said that an estimated 150 Congolese are crossing every day into the villages of Sakure and Gangura, in the Yambio area of South Sudan.