Uganda nabs top LRA commander in ambush

May 13, 2012

Uganda has captured one of the LRA's top five rebels, bringing it a step closer to catching Joseph Kony

By Raymond Baguma and Agencies

UPDATE - River Vovodo, CAR - Uganda has captured one of the Lord's Resistance Army's top five rebels, bringing it a step closer to catching Joseph Kony, the LRA leader accused of war crimes, the military said on Sunday.

Uganda People's Defence Forces said Caesar Achellam, a major general in Kony's outfit of about 200 fighters, had been captured in an ambush on Saturday along the banks of the River Mbou in neighbouring Central African Republic.

They said Achellam had been armed with just an AK-47 rifle and eight rounds of ammunition. He was being held with his wife, a young daughter and a helper. 

Fugitive Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony is constantly changing his hideouts as the African Union prepares to expand a U.S.-assisted manhunt for one of Africa's most wanted men, a senior U.N. official said on Friday.

Kony has evaded the region's militaries for nearly three decades, kidnapping tens of thousands of children to fill the ranks of his Lord's Resistance Army and serve as sex slaves as he moves through the bush. Thousands have been killed by his brutal army.

The deployment of U.S. special forces as advisers to help Ugandan soldiers track Kony and his senior commanders in the dense equatorial jungle across a region that spans several countries has raised hopes the sadistic leader's days are numbered.

Three other African countries - the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan and the Central African Republic - prepare to join an African Union guerrilla coalition to launch an international manhunt to capture Kony and see that he is put on trial. Kony appears to be increasingly nervous as a result.

"The latest we've received so far is that, contrary to what Kony used to do - to stay one month, two months on the ground - he's now moving almost every other day, which means the pressure is mounting on him," said Abou Moussa, head of the U.N. Regional Office for Central Africa.

"They've found traces of where he's settled," Moussa said in an interview with Reuters and one other newswire. "People who've defected have provided information on his state of mind."

"The pressure must continue," he said, adding that this development was "an excellent thing for us."

Kony was thrust back into the spotlight earlier this year when a video, "Kony 2012", highlighting the chilling mutilations, rapes and murders carried out by his spell-bound fighters went viral on the Internet.

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