Uganda army rescues children

Village children are forced to sleep in towns to avoid kidnap

Military officials in Uganda say they have rescued about 250 people - most of them children - who were abducted by rebels.

An army spokesman in Kampala, Major Shaban Bantariza, said they were abandoned by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) as government forces closed in on them in several areas over the last two weeks.

Last month, many children were abducted when their school was raided by rebels.

The LRA has been fighting government forces since the late 1980s to replace President Yoweri Museveni's secular government in a campaign marked by brutality against civilians.

Officials say the LRA has abducted hundreds of children in northern Uganda in recent years, forcing them to fight as child soldiers if they are boys, or to become sex slaves for rebel commanders if they are girls.

"We have been closing in on them (rebels) and they have always used any opportunity to flee and leave behind some of the abducted children, allowing us to rescue 150 of them in the last one week," another officer Lieutenant Paddy Ankunda told the AFP news agency, adding no rebels were killed in the operation.

When asked if the army was perceived as powerless because they did not confront the rebels, Major Bantariza told the BBC the LRA were particularly hard to track.

"You cannot confront terrorists who have no front line, they have no formation," he told the BBC's Focus on Africa programme.

"We will pursue them wherever they go. If you say we are weak, how can a weak force rescue hundreds of people who would otherwise not have come back?"