A three-year-old girl was burnt to death during the attack on men, women and children, an investigation by a human rights group has revealed.
Villagers who escaped death were sent back with their lips and ears cut off as a warning to others of what would happen if they talked — a tactic used frequently by the LRA, which has terrorised much of northern Uganda and the border areas with Sudan and Congo for more than two decades.
The attack — which was unreported until now — confirms that the LRA has restarted terrorising the region despite losing its bases in Sudan a few years ago, when Khartoum, its main backer, signed a peace deal with south Sudanese rebels. According to Human Rights Watch the LRA also abducted at least 250 people during the attack, including 80 children.
Anneke Van Woudenberg, of the New York-based rights group, called the massacre in the Makombo area of northeast Democratic Republic of Congo “one of the worst ever committed by the LRA in its bloody 23-year history”.
The LRA is led by Joseph Kony, a warlord dubbed the Wizard of the Nile who mixes traditional African beliefs with fundamentalist Christianity. He has made a point of abducting children terrified of his supposed magical powers to perpetuate the movement. Kony turns the boys into killing machines, often unleashing them on their relatives, and takes girls as child brides for himself and his commanders. Peace talks with the group began about two years ago but failed after Kony executed any of his commanders who showed interest in reaching a settlement.
The majority of those killed in the December attack were men. They were tied up, some bound to trees, before being hacked to death with machetes or having their skulls crushed with axes. The dead included 13 women and 23 children, according to the report, which was written after a mission visited the region in February.
Dieudonne Abakuba, a clergyman at Isiro-Niangara, in the north east of the country, confirmed that 30 members of the LRA attacked about a dozen villages of the nearby Haut Uele district.
“They killed at least 300 people. They also kidnapped between 200 and 400 others before disappearing,” he said.
“During the well-planned LRA attack,” the LRA “killed at least 321 civilians and abducted 250 others, including at least 80 children,” said the 67-page HRW report.
According to the report, written after a mission visited the region in February: The vast majority of those killed were adult men, whom LRA combatants first tied up and then hacked to death with machetes or crushed their skulls with axes and heavy wooden sticks.
“The dead include at least 13 women and 23 children, the youngest a three-year-old girl who was burned to death. LRA combatants tied some of the victims to trees before crushing their skulls with axes.”
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