Grace Matsiko
Kampala
The UPDF and foreign allies in the third day of military strikes have launched massive propaganda campaign dropping thousands of leaflets by planes in northeastern Eastern with messages urging the Lords Resistance Army fighters to surrender.
The UPDF yesterday said they rescued six formerly abducted people, including a Ugandan, four Congolese and one pregnant girl from Central Africa.
"We have prepared flyers for airdrops and we are dropping these flyers in those areas. The message is ‘come out of the bush, amnesty is there.' We tell them (rebel fighters) that the world is willing to receive them because they were in the hands of a criminal," Capt. Chris Magezi, the spokesman for the UPDF code-named "Lighting Thunder," said via satellite telephone link from Dungu, the main military base for Ugandan and DRC troops.
"We have sent in the ground troops and are already combing the area. We destroyed the camps but the forces on the ground will inform us of the casualties," he added.
Military officials monitoring the raids from Kampala who are not authorised to have their names disclosed for fear of flouting military regulations, said the UPDF, the DRC forces and the Sudan Peoples' Liberation Army (SPLA) continued the air raids for the third day yesterday.
Apparently, the actual casualties on the rebel side or the UPDF will be known, as the infantry forces and other support battalions came closer on foot to the five of the rebel camps shelled in the joint intelligence-led military air strikes, in massive raids Uganda has conducted on a foreign territory since President Yoweri Museveni came into power 22 years ago.
The military officers monitoring the current operation said, because the operation was conducted with an element of surprise, the ground troops were kept over 100km from actual targets that were hit by gun ships and fighter jets.
"These (camps) are located in isolated corners and far from where our troops camped but for two days they are on the move to those targets," one of the senior UPDF commanders told Daily Monitor yesterday.
But the LRA peace delegation spokesman, Mr David Nyekorach Matsanga, said he got information from the rebel fighters in the Garamba jungle that UPDF killed women and children in the targeted camps. He, however, did not give the numbers of the casualties.
"There are no figures yet of those killed but in the communication between the fighters on the ground and the peace delegation, the dead are children and women," Mr Matsanga said by telephone last evening. "I am dismayed by the military option because I worked hard to bring lasting peace to my country only for these efforts to be blown away in a second."
Mr Matsanga said he doubted the UPDF will capture LRA leader Joseph Kony, "because he is not too stupid to have been in those camps they hit". "They (UPDF) will occupy DRC instead of capturing him (Kony)," he said.
Daily Monitor established, that the overall commander of the UN Mission in DRC (Monuc), Gen. Babacar Gaye in a show of support, flew into Dungu yesterday to assess the joint military action against the rebels.
In a meeting with the UPDF overall commander for the operation, Brig Patrick Kankiriho, Gen. Gaye reportedly pledged that Monuc will provide helicopters to evacuate women and children trapped in the fighting.
According to the UPDF, the attack is a pre-emptive strike that aims to free hostages and capture or kill LRA leaders, including those for whom the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants in 2005 for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
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