One of the world’s most wanted men, Joseph Kony, the head of the Lord’s Resistance Army, has been terrorising, kidnapping, maiming and murdering the people of northern Uganda and surrounding countries for 24 years. The LRA was thought to be in the Darfur region of Sudan a few months ago; now we have word from MONUC (the UN’s peacekeeping force in Democratic Republic of Congo) that the LRA may be regrouping in the Garamba national park.
In separate reports, the LRA is said to have massacred 100 civilians and kidnapped 300 more in February, in a raid on Kpanga in the north east of DR Congo. The reports quote Marie Mbolihundele, who was mutilated by the rebels – with her lips and one of her ears being sliced off – before being freed. This brings the number of people killed by the LRA in DR Congo between September 2008 and March 2010 to around 1,800.
The latest news about the LRA comes from an 18-year-old woman who escaped from the LRA at Li-Ika on 31st March after being captured 11 days earlier at Bamokandi. MONUC’s latest intelligence suggests that the LRA is currently operating in the Faradje area. This is about 200km from the Ugandan border, placing Kony within striking distance of reigniting the civil war in Uganda.