UGANDA: Uganda said yesterday it had dealt a major blow to a vicious cult-like militia that has plagued it for two decades, smashing its main camp in Sudan and killing 100 rebels - but apparently let its leader slip away.
"If he survived, then he has lost everything," said Lieut Col Otema Awany, army chief intelligence officer for northern Uganda, the fighting ground of the shadowy Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) led by self-proclaimed mystic Joseph Kony. Uganda accuses the LRA of brutally targeting civilians, mutilating victims and forcing tens of thousands of kidnapped children to become fighters, porters and sex slaves.
Kony's 18-year insurgency, which has few clear aims other than to overthrow the government, has driven some 1.6 million Ugandans from their homes into scores of squalid refugee camps.
The LRA also became one of the first groups to have its alleged human rights abuses probed by the new International Criminal Court in The Hague yesterday.
Awany said Sudan had approved Wednesday's raid on Kony's suspected headquarters, but had not taken part. "Over 100 rebels were killed in yesterday's attack. But Kony's body has not been found," he said.
Meanwhile, the US has softened the threat of UN sanctions against Sudan in a draft resolution pressuring the Khartoum government to rein in Arab militias in the western Darfur region.
The new US draft implicitly maintained the threat of sanctions by expressing the Security Council's intention to invoke measures short of armed force - which could include economic sanctions - should the government fail to fulfill commitments to disarm the Janjaweed militias and give relief workers full access to the region.