Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels killed 22 people during weekend raids in north-east Democratic Republic of Congo, a local official said on Sunday. Around 100 LRA fighters attacked the market town of Sambia at about 2 am on Sunday, killing six civilians and a soldier, said Joseph Bangakya, deputy governor of Orientale province.
On Friday the rebels launched a similar assault on the village of Kana. "They killed 15 people there, among them two women. There were no soldiers deployed there, so they attacked the civilians," Bangakya said.
A Uganda-led coalition including Congo and South Sudan launched a joint offensive against LRA strongholds in Congo's isolated Garamba National Park on December 14 after LRA leader Joseph Kony again failed to sign a deal to end his rebellion.
Kony is wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for war crimes. The LRA was pushed out of northern Uganda after its two-decade bush war had killed thousands of people and displaced 2 million, but has continued to mount raids in Central African Republic, Congo and Sudan.
United Nations Security Council member states backed the anti-LRA operation, which Ugandan and Congolese officials have said destroyed most of the LRA's bases in Congo.
But coalition forces have failed to locate Kony, whose rebels are now attacking villagers in a region that straddles Congo's borders with Sudan and Central African Republic.
LRA fighters fleeing the multinational assault on their bases killed at least 271 people in a series of Christmas week massacres that forced tens of thousands to flee their homes. The Catholic humanitarian charity Caritas said it estimated more than 400 people died in the attacks on Doruma and Faradje, towns left undefended by coalition forces.
Rights campaigners and local officials have called on those forces to give civilians better protection from increasingly frequent LRA attacks.
"We've set off a conflict that risks being very long and very deadly," Bangakya said. "The population must be protected." The LRA, estimated to number between 800 and 1,000 fighters, is notorious for kidnapping children for use as porters, sex slaves and fighters.
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