Uganda to probe refugee attack, rebels kill 10
KAMPALA, Uganda (Reuters) - Uganda's president said Monday he would open an inquiry into a rebel attack that killed up to 50 in a refugee camp, as the Lord's Resistance Army abducted and hacked to death 10 more villagers in the north.
An army spokesman said the latest killings took place about 13 miles from the scene of last week's attack in Abia, more than 180 miles north of the capital Kampala.
"The rebels abducted 10 people from their fields in Moroto county, rounded them up and killed them, hacked them to death with machetes," army spokesman Lt. Chris Magezi said.
"These were also part of the group that attacked Abia and we are tracking them," he added.
Medical sources said about 50 people were killed last Thursday when the LRA, notorious for cutting off the lips and hands of their victims, attacked the camp at Abia, tossing hand grenades and torching huts.
President Yoweri Museveni said in an interview with the state-owned New Vision and the independent Monitor newspapers there would have been more deaths in Abia had the local militia not been on hand to repulse the rebels.
"There were two mistakes by the army. Firstly why didn't the army go itself to hunt these bandits? Amuka and Arrow boys (local militia) are not supposed to do offensive operations," Museveni was quoted as saying.
"Mistake number two was on coordination. Why didn't the army call in gunships and so on?" he said, adding these were some of the reasons for an inquiry.
The army said Sunday one of its patrols had killed five of the insurgents who had rampaged through the refugee camp, sparking a gunfight with heavily outnumbered armed residents organized into a militia force.
The cult-like LRA, led by self-proclaimed mystic Joseph Kony, have defied repeated attempts by the army to crush their 17-year revolt in northern Uganda.
02/09/04 09:21 ET
"The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth becomes the greatest enemy of the state."
- Dr. Joseph M. Goebbels - Hitler's propaganda minister
