Dakar (Senegal): Ugandan rebels waging one of Africa's longest and most brutal wars killed at least 16 people including two wildlife rangers in the latest reported attacks in Congo's northeast, conservation officials and the UN said today.

In an attack yesterday, the rebels killed eight people in the village of Napopo, burning houses and kidnapping several others in the area near Congo's borders with Sudan and Uganda, Ron Redmond, spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said in Geneva.

Redmond had few details but said victims reported that the so-called Lord's Resistance Army was behind the attack.

In a separate assault Friday in the same region, rebels attacked the Garamba National Park headquarters at Nagero, the conservation group Wildlife Direct said in a statement. Two wildlife rangers were killed along with two wives of park wardens, the group said.

Thirteen others were hurt, most by bullets, it said.

Last week, Congo's government said a joint offensive launched in December with the armies of Uganda and Sudan had routed Ugandan rebels from the park and forced them to flee the area toward neighboring Central African Republic.

The Lord's Resistance Army has fought for two decades, and aid and rights groups have accused them of cutting off the lips of civilians and forcing thousands of children to serve as soldiers or sex slaves. The conflict has spilled into Sudan and Congo, which suffered back-to-back civil wars from 1996 to 2002 that drew neighboring countries into what became a rush to plunder Congo's massive mineral wealth.

Source : PTI