By Katrina Manson
KINSHASA (Reuters) - Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army rebels have abducted 697 people in central Africa in the past 18 months, killing many of them, according to a human rights group investigation.
"The LRA has killed at least 255 adults and children, often by crushing their skulls with clubs," said Human Rights Watch, whose researchers spent a month gathering evidence on attacks in Central African Republic and Democratic Republic of Congo.
"Nearly one third of those abducted have been children, many of whom are being forced to serve as soldiers or are being used for sex by the group's fighters," its statement added.
The group charted abuses by the rebels that include tying victims at the waist in long human chains, beating them with branches and machetes, forcing them into slave labour, and humiliating captives by making them dance for their freedom.
Those who cannot keep up with the pace of swampy bush treks are clubbed to death and many captured children as young as 10 are armed and forced to kill other children with clubs, it said.
The group said these attacks have had a "devastating impact" on communities, forcing up to 74,000 people to flee territories in southeastern Central African Republic and neighbouring northeastern Congo.
"FAILING IN OUR MANDATE"
Another campaign group, Enough, said on Wednesday the LRA had attacked the northeastern Bas Uele territory 51 times in the past 15 months, bringing Congo's death toll at the hands of the LRA to 2,500 since 2008.
The Human Rights Watch findings underlined the scale of the catastrophe that the United States is seeking to tackle with new legislation that requires it to develop a strategy to bring to justice Joseph Kony's LRA sect, which has relied on mysticism and violence in its fight against Uganda over 23 years.
Several efforts to capture Kony, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court, have failed. In 2006, eight Guatemalan special forces working with the U.N. mission were killed in a raid on the LRA, while joint operations between Sudan, Uganda and Congo also failed in 2008, forcing the LRA to spread out across the region.
"The threat is proportionately much greater than anything from FDLR and ADF," a U.N. source told Reuters, referring to two active rebel groups in the east of Congo. "We simply do not have enough troops dedicated to that area. We are failing in our mandate."
Congo says the situation has improved, however.
"In reality the problem is no longer one of military defence ... but public safety," General Didier Etumba, head of Congo's national army, told Radio Okapi at the end of July.
The U.N. peacekeeping mission in Congo, MONUSCO, is supporting Congo's operations against the FDLR but has closed its base in Bas Uele in the past month as part of a troop drawdown requested by the government.
"Today we don't have a big LRA army running around. We are talking about small groups of five, six, 10 (people) doing this killing," said MONUSCO spokesman Madnodje Mounoubai. "We still have military operations in this area to put a complete end to the LRA operation."
Anneke Van Woudenberg, senior Africa researcher at HRW who conducted the research, said: "The protection of civilians under LRA attack across central Africa is woefully inadequate."
(Editing by Richard Valdmanis and Giles Elgood)
