Ugandan rebels kill 12 in Congo, U.N. reports

Ugandan rebels have killed at least a dozen people, including two wildlife rangers, in attacks in Congo’s northeast, conservation officials and the United Nations said Tuesday.

In the worst incident, the rebels killed eight people Monday in the village of Napopo, near Congo’s borders with Sudan and Uganda, Ron Redmond, spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said in Geneva. He said the militants burned houses and kidnapped several people. Redmond had few details but said victims reported that the so-called Lord’s Resistance Army was behind the attack.

In an assault Friday in the same region, rebels attacked the Garamba National Park headquarters at Nagero, the conservation group WildlifeDirect said in a statement. Two wildlife rangers were killed along with two wives of park wardens, the group said. Thirteen people were hurt, most by gunfire, it said.

Uganda’s minister of state for defense, Ruth Nankabirwa, said the rebels hoped to obtain rangers’ guns when they attacked the remote Garamba park, home to elephants, giraffes, buffalo and hippos.

Rebel spokesman David Matsanga, however, said Uganda’s army was to blame.

Aid and rights groups have accused the Lord’s Resistance Army of cutting off the lips of civilians and forcing thousands of children to serve as soldiers or sex slaves. The conflict has spilled into Sudan and Congo.

The Ugandan rebels have killed more than 400 people in a series of massacres since Dec. 25 in northeastern Congo, according to the Catholic charity group Caritas.