Ugandan troops killed 32 members of Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in a helicopter gunship attack in neighbouring southern Sudan, an army spokesman said today.
The claim, which has not easily verified because of the remoteness of the area, comes days after the LRA was accused of killing at least 41 villagers in another part of lawless southern Sudan.
"We found them yesterday on the Juba-to-Nisito road and killed 32 of them," said Lieutenant Paddy Ankunda, army spokesman for northern Uganda.
Twenty captives, mostly children, were rescued from the rebels, he said. No Ugandan troops were hurt in the clash that took place 55 miles inside Sudan, he added.
In 2002 the Khartoum and Kampala governments struck a deal to let Ugandan troops pursue LRA members across the border into southern Sudan.
The LRA, led by self-proclaimed prophet Mr Joseph Kony who is believed to live in southern Sudan, has waged a civil war against the government of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni for 18 years.
The group is notorious for its brutality, routinely targeting civilians, mutilating its victims and abducting tens of thousands of children as fighters, porters and sex slaves.
Most Ugandans say the group appears to have no clear aims or political objectives, but repeated clashes and raids have forced some 1.6 million people to flee their homes in northern Uganda and move to more than 60 squalid refugee camps.
The United Nations said in a report released yesterday that in the past month the LRA had killed 125 people at camps within Uganda for displaced people.