UN: Rebels kidnap dozens of civilians in DRC

Nearly 100 people have been kidnapped in northeast Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) during an attack blamed on Uganda’s rebel Lord’s Resistance Army, the United Nations (UN) said on Wednesday.
Lieutenant-Colonel Martin Amouzou Codjo, spokesperson for the UN’s MONUSCO peace mission in DR Congo, said the suspected LRA members had “attacked and looted” two villages during Saturday’s attack in the Bas-Uele province.
“These attackers also kidnapped nearly 100 people to carry the loot,” Codjo told a press conference. He condemning the regular atrocities committed by the ruthless LRA against civilians in northeastDRC.
The LRA first emerged in northern Uganda in 1986 when it took up arms in the name of the Acholi ethnic group against the government of President Yoweri Museveni.
Over the years it has moved freely across porous regional borders, shifting from Uganda to sow terror in southern Sudan before heading into northeastern DRC in 2005, finally crossing into the southeastern Central African Republic in 2008.
Combining religious mysticism with guerrilla tactics and bloodthirsty ferocity, its leader Joseph Kony has turned scores of young girls into his personal sex slaves while claiming to be fighting to impose the Bible’s Ten Commandments.
The group has killed more than 100 000 people and kidnapped more than 60 000 children, forcing many of them to become child soldiers, according to the UN.