KHARTOUM, 20 September 2005 — Ugandan rebels from the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) ambushed a school bus in southern Sudan, killing 14 people, mostly women and children, officials said yesterday. “The attack took place on Saturday, near the border with Uganda. LRA rebels attacked a school bus and most of the victims are women and children,” said a local security source.
Pagan Amun, a senior official with the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), confirmed the attack. “It took place in Loka, a small town between Juba and Yei,” he told AFP.
Meanwhile, the latest round of peace talks between the Sudanese government and rebels from the Darfur region ran into trouble yesterday when insurgents accused a state-backed militia of breaching a cease-fire and killing 30 people.
African Union cease-fire monitors said they had launched an investigation into the alleged raid, but had so far found no evidence to support the insurgents’ claim.
“As is the case with every other round of talks, the government of Sudan is violating the cease-fire agreement,” said Abdulrahman Musa, head of the Sudanese Liberation Movement and Sudanese Liberation Army delegation to an African Union peace conference in Abuja.
Speaking on the sidelines of a preliminary seminar on power sharing, Musa told reporters that his group and a second rebel force, the Justice and Equality Movement, had lodged a complaint with AU cease-fire monitors and conference mediators.
The representative of the AU commission monitoring the Darfur cease-fire, Babagana Kingibe, told reporters that the allegation was being investigated. “We’ve asked our troops to verify,” he said.
“They have made a preliminary survey and so far they have not found any evidence of any attack.” “We have asked the SLA to give us the coordinates of the position where this attack is supposed to have taken place. They are going to provide us the coordinates and we shall send a team to investigate whether such an attack indeed took place or not,” he said.
Ambassador Kingibe said that the insurgents had warned mediators that the group was “considering” pulling out of the talks but had agreed to wait for the outcome of the inquiry. Previous rounds of talks on ways to end a 30-month-old conflict which has left some 300,000 dead have been disrupted and in one case all but aborted by accusations that one side or the other had breached the cease-fire.
“During the past week the government of Sudan, through the Janjaweed militia, attacked the positions of the Sudanese Liberation Army. They killed, burned and looted in many areas and also raped many women and young ladies,” Musa alleged.
“In the area around the Jabal Mara Mountains, 17 were killed in Korbia in north Darfur on September 17 and 13 were killed yesterday in western Jabal Mara. The fighting is continuing in the area,” he said. “In the final analysis this violation will not create a conducive environment to reach a settlement during this round of talks,” he said.
