15 held over Sudan attacks

Oct 22, 2006

<b>KAMPALA, Sunday -</b> South Sudan’s military has arrested 15 suspected north Sudanese troops in connection with a string of attacks last week that killed at least 38 civilians, a top south Sudanese general said yesterday.

KAMPALA, Sunday - South Sudan’s military has arrested 15 suspected north Sudanese troops in connection with a string of attacks last week that killed at least 38 civilians, a top south Sudanese general said yesterday.

South Sudan is hosting peace talks between Uganda’s government and Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), both of whom accused the other of carrying out Wednesday’s ambushes between the southern capital Juba and the eastern banks of the Nile.

“We arrested 15 armed men in connection with the ambushes and we killed two when they fired at us,” said Major-General Wilson Deng Kuoirot, who heads an independent monitoring team at the Uganda peace talks.

“All were Sudanese attempting to attack a village near Juba. It is not established whether it was they who did the ambush, but we are investigating,” he told Reuters by telephone.

The attacks had appeared to bear the hallmarks of the LRA, who long terrorised villagers in lawless parts of southern Sudan. The Ugandan guerrillas set up bases there in the mid-1990s and were supported by Khartoum as a proxy force against its own rebels.
Deng said he suspected the men were “elements of (Arabic-speaking northern) Sudan Armed Forces”.
“They were speaking Arabic. My belief is they were pretending to be LRA to attack and loot civilians,” he said.

Under a north-south peace deal, all Sudanese militias were ordered to join the southern Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) or the northern Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF).

The SPLA must leave the north and the SAF are to vacate the south. But not all militias have joined the armies and the SPLA has accused the SAF of continuing to arm and support militia in the south.

The SAF had no immediate comment. But Deng said if it turned out Sudanese forces were behind the ambushes “that would clear the LRA”.

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