(MENAFN- The Peninsula)
AFP
Kampala: Uganda said on Tuesday that army commandos had destroyed camps belonging to Joseph Kony, the fugitive leader of the feared Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), in the Central African Republic.
(FILES) soldiers of the Uganda People's Defence Force (UPDF) patrol in the northerneastern part of the Central African Republic to secure the area from rebel groups' possible attacks, on June 25, 2014. (Photo by Michele SIBILONI / AFP)
The Uganda Peoples' Defence Forces (UPDF) said the operation was carried out jointly with armed forces from South Sudan and CAR against three camps in the east of the country near the Sudanese border.
"All camps were destroyed, and equipment was captured," the UPDF said in a statement on X, formerly Twitter.
"Remnants of the LRA still taking refuge in CAR or elsewhere on the African continent will be hunted down. Unless they surrender to the authorities for proper processing and rehabilitation, they will continue to be considered criminals," it added.
Kony is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity over the LRA's long reign of terror across several African nations.
The former altar boy founded the LRA in the 1980s with the aim of establishing a regime based on the Ten Commandments, launching a rebellion against Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni that spread to the CAR, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan.
It killed more than 100,000 people and abducted 60,000 children who were forced to become soldiers and porters.
Uganda's announcement Tuesday followed a court ruling last week that found a former LRA commander guilty of multiple counts of crimes against humanity in the first such war crimes trial in the East African country.
Thomas Kwoyelo was convicted of 44 offences including murder, rape, torture, pillaging, abduction and the destruction of settlements for internally displaced people.
Kwoyelo, who had been waiting for years behind bars for a verdict in the landmark case, had denied all the charges against him.
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