OVER 40 senior Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) commanders and 462 ordinary rebels have been killed in the joint UPDF/Arrow Group operations in Teso.
| That sounds like a major dent in the LRA... |
The minister of State for health, Captain Mike Mukula, said this in Kitgum on Friday while distributing medicine and other items for the over 200,000 internally displaced people (IDPs) in 18 camps in the district. Mukula urged the Acholi to unite and support the UPDF to crush the rebels and restore peace. "We should have a common front as people of Acholi, Lango and Teso so as to bring peace and tranquillity. So we should fight soul to soul, shoulder to shoulder to achieve that goal," the minister said. He said if Joseph Kony does not come out of the bush under the amnesty which expires on January 17, 2004, the army would either capture or kill him.
Mukula, who visited Mucwini and Labuje IDP camps, 14 miles north of Kitgum town, was accompanied by the director general of the Internal Security Organisation, Col. Elly Kayanja and the district chairman Norman Ojwee. Mukula, dressed in military fatigue and a bulletproof jacket, was escorted by armoured personnel carriers. Mukula said the insurgency caused by Joseph Kony’s LRA rebels in the northern and eastern regions, especially Acholi, Lango and Teso, would come to an end because the army had acquired enough military hardware to fight the rebels. |