Congo massacres leave 400 dead

NAIROBI, Kenya – Ugandan rebels have killed more than 400 people in northeastern Congo since Christmas, an aid agency said Tuesday.

The Catholic charity, Caritas, cited reports by its staff in the region.

“Caritas is shocked by its staff reports of a series of massacres in the Democratic Republic of Congo carried out by Ugandan rebels on Christmas Day and the days following,” the group said in a statement on its Web site.

The Lord’s Resistance Army rebel group and the Ugandan government have accused each other of being behind recent attacks in the remote area, where the rebels have bases.

Patrick Nicholson, a spokesman for the Catholic charity, said the staff identified rebels by their dreadlocked hair and their Acholi language. “There was no question in the staffs’ minds that it was the LRA,” he told the Associated Press in a phone interview.

Telephone calls by the Associated Press to the rebels were not returned Tuesday. But Uganda’s army spokesman, Paddy Ankunda, said the Caritas report was accurate. Regarding the rebels, he said: “We are closing on them. We will certainly get them and stop the killings.”

In New York, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned “in the strongest possible terms the appalling atrocities reportedly committed by the Lord’s Resistance Army,” said U.N. deputy spokeswoman Marie Okabe. The U.N. chief urged the forces of Uganda, Congo and southern Sudan to coordinate with the humanitarian community and U.N. peacekeeping missions in the region “to ensure the effective delivery of assistance to those affected by the LRA attacks,” Okabe said.

Caritas’ allegations are the latest reports of attacks in the area near where the armies of Uganda, Sudan and Congo began an offensive this month to root out the Lord’s Resistance Army.

On Monday, officials and witnesses said attackers had hacked to death scores of people who sought refuge at a Catholic church the day after Christmas, and the United Nations said the rebels had killed a total of 189 people in three villages in the area on two recent days.