African Union peacekeeping troops in the Sudan have freed 132 children abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army.
African Union peacekeeping troops in the Sudan have freed 132 children abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army. According to a 22 May 2014 report from Sudan’s Catholic Radio Network, the commander of the AU Regional Taskforce last week briefed civic and military leaders in Yambio in South Sudan’s Western Equatoria State, stating the children had been freed, 196 LRA soldiers capture and over 502 killed in a recent push against the guerrilla group. Operating from bases in Northern Uganda, Southern Sudan and the south-eastern Central African Republic, the LRA has waged a campaign of terror for over two decades across the region. The specter of an alliance between the LRA and Sudanese rebels led by former Vice-President Riek Machar to topple the government of Sudan’s President Salva Kiir has been raised by Uganda. A spokesman for the Ugandan People’s Defence Force last week told reporters that they believed the LRA and the Sudanese rebels were engaged in secret talks. However, this accusation was “wild propaganda. This is another desperate attempt by the invading UPDF to try to justify and prolong their colonization of some parts of South Sudan,” a spokesman for Machar told the Sudan Tribune.
