Kony frees 40 Ebola suspects

GULU, Uganda - Rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army in northern Uganda have released 40 adults they recently abducted, fearing they might infect their ranks with the deadly Ebola virus, local officials told Reuters on Friday. An outbreak of Ebola in Gulu has killed 47 people. The Sudan-based rebels have been fighting the government since 1987 and regularly launch attacks and abduct civilians in the area from their bases in southern Sudan. It had abducted thousands of people, mostly children, to help them in the vicious guerrilla war against government. UN agencies in Kampala estimate that several thousand abducted Ugandans are still in Sudan, some born in LRA camps. Despite an agreement between Sudan and Uganda signed last December, progress on repatriation has been slow. Lt. Col. Walter Ochola, Gulu's district chairman, said LRA commanders were now worried that some of the captives. might have the haemorrhagic virus. "The LRA said they should go home because they didn't want to catch Ebola," Ochora told Reuters. Ebola spreads easily through contact with an infected person's body fluids and causes its victims to bleed.