Ugee

LRA the Ugandan rebels have abducted 1200 in Congo

Geneva - Ugandan rebels this year have killed around 1 200 Congolese civilians and abducted 1 500, mostly children, in a remote region of northeast Congo, a UN official said on Friday.

Fighting between government forces and the Lord's Resistance Army rebels has driven another 220 000 Congolese from their homes in the Haut-Uele region, said Ross Mountain, the UN chief's deputy special representative to Congo.

The Lord's Resistance Army rebel group is notorious for torturing, raping and mutilating civilians. The group also forces children it abducts to be rebel soldiers, and Mountain said most of the people kidnapped in the first six months of this year were children.

The LRA has been waging a 20-year conflict in Uganda - one of Africa's longest and most brutal rebellions. The conflict has spilled into Sudan and Congo, which suffered back-to-back civil wars from 1996 to 2002 that drew neighbouring countries into what became a rush to plunder Congo's massive mineral wealth.

Child soldiers

The rebel group's leader Joseph Kony and others are wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for alleged crimes including murder, rape, enslavement and using child soldiers.

Elsewhere in eastern Congo, Mountain said, civilians have become targets of looting, extortion, killings and rapes by the Congolese army as well as Rwandan rebels.

An estimated 800 000 Congolese have been driven from their homes this year in the regions of north Kivu and south Kivu, the UN official said.

Rape is still being used as a weapon of war, Mountain said, noting that north Kivu alone has registered nearly 1 200 rapes, some committed by soldiers, police and militia members.

"It's a scourge," Mountain said, urging the government to speak out against the rapes.

"Not all rapes and attacks against women are done by the military, but a very substantial proportion is done by men in uniform," he said.

Congo's armed forces in the area are conducting an offensive against rebel fighters accused of taking part in neighbouring Rwanda's 1994 genocide and subsequently seeking refuge in Congo.

- SAPA