UPDF ambushed in Sudan

Oct 16, 2005

TWO soldiers were shot dead on Friday when LRA rebels ambushed the convoy of the UPDF 79th Battalion commanding officer, Lt. Col. John Byoma, on the Yei-Maridi road in Sudan.

By Frank Mugabi

TWO soldiers were shot dead on Friday when LRA rebels ambushed the convoy of the UPDF 79th Battalion commanding officer, Lt. Col. John Byoma, on the Yei-Maridi road in Sudan.

Army spokesman for West Nile Capt. Anech Mubangizi said Byoma was shot in the leg. He said two rebels were killed in the fire exchange.

Mubangizi said the battalion’s intelligence officer, whose name was not established and three military escorts suffered minor bullet wounds.

He said between 30 and 40 rebels, part of the group that fled from the DR Congo under pressure from Congolese and the UN peacekeepers, staged the 4:00pm ambush. They burnt a military car.

Mubangizi said Byoma and the other survivors were given first aid at a UPDF mobile clinic in Koboko before they were flown to Gulu Military Hospital on Saturday.

Byoma, driving his official military double cabin pick-up truck, was bound for Maridi town at the border of Sudan and the DR Congo, where his battalion has been deployed jointly with the Sudan People’s Liberation Army to form a block force against the LRA rebels that crossed to the Garamba National Park of Congo recently.

This has been the first attack on hundreds of UPDF troops that were recently deployed in southern Sudan on the Yei-Juba road after reports that LRA rebel deputy chief Vincent Otti had crossed with 400 rebels into Congo via Yei.

The troops from the 51st and 79th battalions have been deployed to form a joint force against Otti’s group, who refused to surrender and may be trying to cross back to their bases in Sudan.

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