South Sudan arrests 15 over civilian killings

South Sudan arrests 15 over civilian killings

Sunday 22 October 2006.

Oct 22, 2006 (KAMPALA) — South Sudan’s military has arrested 15 suspected north Sudanese troops in connection with a string of attacks last week that killed at least 38 civilians, a top south Sudanese general said on Sunday.

South Sudan is hosting peace talks between Uganda’s government and Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels, both of whom accused the other of carrying out Wednesday’s ambushes between the southern capital Juba and the eastern banks of the Nile.

"We arrested 15 armed men in connection with the ambushes and we killed two when they fired at us," said Major-General Wilson Deng Kuoirot, who ######### an independent monitoring team at the Uganda peace talks.

"All were Sudanese attempting to attack a village near Juba. It is not established whether it was they who did the ambush, but we are investigating," he told Reuters by telephone.

The attacks had appeared to bear the hallmarks of the LRA, who long terrorised villagers in lawless parts of southern Sudan. The Ugandan guerrillas set up bases there in the mid-1990s and were supported by Khartoum as a proxy force against its own rebels.

Deng said he suspected the men were "elements of (Arabic-speaking northern) Sudan Armed Forces".

"They were speaking Arabic. My belief is they were pretending to be LRA to attack and loot civilians," he said.

Under a north-south peace deal, all Sudanese militias were instructed to join the southern Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) or the northern Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF). The SPLA must leave the north and the SAF are to vacate the south.

But since the January 2005 deal not all militias have joined the armies and the SPLA has accused the SAF of continuing to arm and support militia in the south.

The SAF had no immediate comment.

"CLEAR THE LRA"

Deng said if it turned out Sudanese forces were behind the ambushes "that would clear the LRA".

The south has long been a tinderbox of armed men and bandits taking advantage of various conflicts to kill and rob civilians.

The LRA held up the arrests as proof they were respecting a ceasefire signed with the Ugandan government in August.

"I gave orders to my people to respect (it)," the LRA’s deputy chief Vincent Otti told Reuters by satellite phone from his jungle hideout.

"I was saying these ambushes were not us all along, but still we get blamed. In fact, it was (the) Sudanese."

Otti denied a report in a Ugandan Sunday newspaper he had ordered his fighters to attack Ugandan soldiers in south Sudan.

"I said they should defend themselves in case of any attack (by the military), but not shoot first," Otti said.

Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni visited Juba on Saturday for the first time since the talks began in July — and had bitter exchanges with LRA delegates during a brief meeting.

The LRA war has killed tens of thousands of people and uprooted 1.7 million in northern Uganda alone during 20 years of fighting, as well as destabilising remote parts of southern Sudan and northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

(Reuters)