Ugandan rebels slaughter 192

SCORES of rebels attacked a displaced persons' camp in northern Uganda, shooting people as they fled and burning others alive in their huts.

At least 192 people were killed, with dozens of others wounded, the area's legislator said yesterday.

The attack on Barloonyo camp in Lira district is one of the worst in recent years by the rebel Lord's Resistance Army which has been fighting the Ugandan government for 17 years. As the rebels surrounded the camp, many people ran to their makeshift grass huts, rather than trying to escape, and were burned as the insurgents torched houses, said legislator Charles Anjiro.

"It's a hopeless situation. We went there this morning with the Lira district police commander and physically counted 192 bodies," Anjiro said from Lira town, 16 miles south of the camp.

Dr Jane Aceng, head of Lira hospital, said 56 people were taken to the hospital with burns, shrapnel and gunshot wounds.

Army spokesman Major Shaban Bantariza confirmed the attack, but said he did not know the death toll. He said it was possible that more than 100 people were killed in the camp, which was home to about 5,000 people who had fled there because of the insurgency, which has forced more than one million people to flee their homes.

The camp was being guarded by members of a local defence force, who were outnumbered and out-gunned, Bantariza said.

It was not possible to contact the Lord's Resistance Army, which is led by Joseph Kony, who claims to have spiritual powers.

"The rebels came with sophisticated guns ... and grenades, when they arrived at the camp at 5.30pm, they approached it from three fronts from the north, east and south and left the western side for their exit," Anjiro said.

The rebel group, which has wreaked havoc across northern and north-eastern Uganda, rose from the remnants of a revolt by soldiers from the Acholi tribe after President Yoweri Museveni, a southerner, seized power in 1986 after leading his own five-year bush war. The Acholi is the dominant tribe in northern Uganda.Most of the rebels had given up by mid-1988, but those who kept up the fight coalesced into the Lord's Resistance Army.

The group replenishes its ranks with children it abducts to use as fighters, porters or concubines. Estimates of the group's size range from hundreds to a few thousand.