Geneva - The United Nations said Monday that attacks by the Ugandan rebel group the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in southern Sudan and Congo "may amount to crimes against humanity". In two separate reports, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights outlined a series of attacks by the LRA in both countries, saying they involved torture, rape and child abuse.
"These attacks and systematic and widespread human rights violation carried out by the LRA ... may constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity," said the report on the LRA attacks in Congo.
At least 1,200 people were killed and 1,400 abducted, including 600 children and 400 women, in northeastern Congo, the report said. The attacks also displaced around 230,000 people, added the report, which covered attacks from September 2008 to June 2009.
In Sudan, at least 27 attacks took place between December 2008 and March 2009, second report said. The attacks left some 81 civilians killed and many others were kidnapped to work "as child soldiers, sex slaves and spies".
The LRA was formed in the late 1980s in Uganda. The group was driven out of Uganda in 2002 to the Democratic Republic of Congo and south Sudan from where its members staged cross-border attacks, targetting civilians and kidnapping children to use as fighters.
In 2005, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for LRA chief Joseph Kony and others for war crimes.
