Over 300 killed in Congo raid

---

KINSHASA, Mar 28 (AFP): Ugandan LRA rebels killed at least 321 civilians in a previously unreported 'well-planned' four-day attack on villages in the DR Congo last December, Human Rights Watch said Sunday.
In a report released in Kampala, HRW said 250 others, including at least 80 children, were abducted in the December 14-17 Lord's Resistance Army attack in the remote Makombo area of northeastern Haut Uele district.
A Catholic clergyman at Isiro-Niangara in the same district, speaking before the report was issued, confirmed that 30 members of the rebel LRA attacked a dozen villages of Haut Uele, which is in Orientale province.
"They killed at least 300 people. They also kidnapped between 200 and 400 others before disappearing," clergyman Dieudonne Abakuba told AFP.
"During the well-planned LRA attack," the rebel outfit "killed at least 321 civilians and abducted 250 others, including at least 80 children," said the HRW report headed "Trail of Death: LRA Atrocities in Northeastern Congo."
"The vast majority of those killed were adult men, whom LRA combatants first tied up and then hacked to death with machetes or crushed their skulls with axes and heavy wooden sticks.
"The dead include at least 13 women and 23 children, the youngest a three-year-old girl who was burned to death. LRA combatants tied some of the victims to trees before crushing their skulls with axes," said the report, written after a mission visited the region in February.
Between 25 and 40 rebels had walked for 100 kilometres (65 miles) during the operation which was aimed at killing, abducting and pillaging, Human Rights Watch said.