UN demands release of 90 abducted Congolese children

Sep 23, 2008, 12:33 GMT

Nairobi/Kinshasa - The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has demanded the immediate release of 90 schoolchildren it says were abducted in the Democratic Republic of Congo by a notorious Ugandan rebel group.

The agency said local authorities informed them that the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) took 50 children from the village of Kiliwa and 40 from a secondary school in Duru in the northeast of the sprawling nation, which borders Uganda.

'UNICEF demands the unconditional release of the abducted children,' Julien Harneis, UNICEF's Chief of Field Operations in eastern DR Congom said.

'UNICEF is very concerned that they will now be forced to fight or support fighting, putting their lives at risk,' he added.

A village chief and two Italian missionaries were taken at the same time as the children and three civilians were killed in the attacks on September 17, UNICEF said.

The LRA, which is now holed up in a national park in northeast DR Congo, began peace talks to end its bloody rebellion two years ago.

However, it is yet to sign a final peace deal and is believed to have been using the time to rearm.

In recent months the group has launched attacks in DR Congo, southern Sudan and the Central African Republic and has also renewed the practice of kidnapping children to serve as soldiers or work as sex slaves.

The Congolese army, backed up logistically by UN peacekeepers, earlier this month sent troops into northeast Congo to protect civilians from the LRA.

The LRA rebellion, which has stretched over decades, has seen tens of thousands killed or mutilated and several million displaced in Uganda.

LRA leader Joseph Kony, a former lay preacher in his late 40s, says he will only sign the peace deal if the International Criminal Court removes indictments it slapped on him and four other LRA members for war crimes.

According to the court, the LRA is guilty of abductions, killings, rapes and the conscription of Ugandan children.