24 Sep 2009

A UN military source has warned that while a join military offensive has weakened Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), the rebels still pose a threat.

"The LRA are weakened but still remain active. They're still a threat," said Lieutenant-Colonel Jean-Paul Dietrich, the military spokesman of the UN mission in Congo (MONUC), quoted by AFP Thursday.

Northeastern Congo is the most violence-prone area, with 'indiscriminate' attacks by the rebels.

"They attack any target, including military ones, capable of providing them with some supplies," Dietrich stressed.

The joint offensive by Ugandan and South Sudanese armies, fighting alongside the Congolese armed forces (FARDC), which ended in March, sought to uproot the rebellion and capture the LRA leader, Joseph Kony.

The uprising, now one of Africa's longest-running conflicts, began in 1987 as an uprising against the Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni.

The crackdown, backed by the MONUC since April, has claimed 344 rebels and led to the arrest of another 82, including two of Kony's wives, according to figures released by FARDC.

Earlier on September, the fight was extended to the Central Africa Republic, Where Kony is now believed to be hiding.

The LRA, founded more than a decade ago in the Democratic Republic of Congo, has spread to neighboring South Sudan and Uganda and blamed for some the most brutal crimes in the region.

On September 11, UN officials accused the LRA of mounting a series of "brutal" attacks in south Sudan, burning villages, massacring civilians and abducting children.

A few days later, the Ugandan army said it had killed Lieutenant-Colonel Arit Santos, an LRA commander, during a clash in the Central African Republic.

presstv