Rebels kill scores in Uganda massacres - army
By Paul Busharizi
KAMPALA, Nov 8 (Reuters) - Rebels shot and hacked to death scores of civilians in northern Uganda on Thursday night and Friday morning, beheading some of them, in apparent revenge for the killing of a rebel commander, the army said on Saturday.
The Vatican missionary news service said rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) killed about 60 people on a rampage through Lira district, forcing some villagers to watch as they beheaded the corpses of fellow villagers they had just killed.
Local priests reported villagers as saying rebels had set fire to many huts with the inhabitants still inside but this could not be immediately confirmed.
"Scores of civilians were killed at around midnight on November 6 in Alanyi and Awayopiny villages in Lira district," Lieutenant Chris Magezi, a spokesman for the army's Third Division, told Reuters on Saturday.
He had suggested the toll might exceed 100 but later said there was no confirmation the number would reach that high.
Thousands of terrified civilians were fleeing a number of villages and seeking shelter in and around Lira town, the main settlement in the district of the same name.
The guerrillas, led by self-proclaimed prophet Joseph Kony, are feared for their brutality and for abducting thousands of children for use as sex slaves and front-line fighters in the east African country's 17-year-old civil war.
"They are cutting off people's heads. Every time we hear of an incident it's a new level of brutality," Father John Fraser who helps run the Catholic-church owned radio station in Lira, a town of up to 100,000 inhabitants.
"Lira is chock-a-block (full to capacity). People have been pouring into town for the last three days," he told Reuters, estimating the influx at between 2,000 and 3,000 people a day.
"People are very frightened. There is no way anyone is going back out to the villages anytime soon."
Magezi said Kony appeared to have ordered the raid to avenge the army's October 29 killing of LRA number two Charles Tabuley, a move widely seen as likely to weaken rebel operations.
The army blames Tabuley for several massacres of civilians in northern and eastern Uganda over the past 16 months.
The government deployed 14,000 troops backed by helicopter gunships and tanks against the rebels last year, but LRA attacks have since intensified and pushed further south towards Kampala.
VILLAGERS FORCED TO BEHEAD VICTIMS
In Rome the Vatican's missionary news agency MISNA quoted unnamed missionary sources as saying about 60 people had been killed in the attacks. They said more than 30 civilians were killed in Awayopiny and Alanyi, 20 people were killed in Omarari village and nine were killed in North Omoro village.
The LRA says it wants to topple the government of President Yoweri Museveni but it has never spelt out its demands publicly.
Sudan and Uganda in October renewed a pact to cooperate in removing rebels from southern Sudan. The deal allowing Ugandan troops to pursue the LRA in southern Sudan expired in September.
Uganda accused Sudan in September of resuming the support it once gave to the rebels. Khartoum denied the accusations and said it would deal seriously with rogue military officers it suspected were collaborating with the LRA.
(Additional reporting by William Maclean)
11/08/03 10:30 ET
