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LRA Kill 40 in Southern Sudan

The Monitor (Kampala)
NEWS
July 26, 2004
Posted to the web July 26, 2004

By Frank Nyakairu & Agencies
Kampala
The LRA rebels last week killed about 40 people during a raid on villages in
southern Sudan, including seven Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA)
guerrillas, a church leader and SPLA officials said on Saturday.
"On Friday morning, LRA rebels raided the small village of Moti, came across
our small detachment there, overran it and killed seven of our fighters," SPLA
liaison officer in Kampala, George Riak, told AFP by telephone.
Moti is a remote village about 50Kms southeast of the Khartoum-held town of
Juba. The SPLA, which controls the major part of southern Sudan, has signed a
framework peace agreement with Khartoum on ending the 21-year-old civil war in
the south.
Another militia force, the Equatorial Defense Forces (EDF), claimed the LRA was
aided by the Sudanese government gunships. "Hundreds of LRA rebels supported
still by Government of Sudan Army have launched fresh full attack on the
village of Moti," EDF's Secretary General, Charles Barnaba Kisanga, said in a
press release.
"According to our commanders in the battlefield our positions have been strafed
time again and again by the Sudan government army helicopter gunship in aid of
the LRA rebels," he added.
Rev. Paul Yugusuk, head of Lomega Anglican Church in southern Sudan, said: "I
cannot tell the exact number of people killed, but in one village we found five
bodies, then 10 bodies in another, while in some, we saw about 20 bodies."
SPLA spokesman George Garang told AFP in Nairobi that LRA has been attacking
villages in Sudan's Eastern Equatoria province in the past weeks, but could not
give the number of casualties.

   

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