By Tim Cocks
Abia, Uganda - Ugandan rebels who massacred about 50 people at a refugee camp duped the guards by posing as soldiers, even watching a football match with them before springing their attack, survivors said on Saturday.
The Lords Resistance Army (LRA) rebels rampaged through the camp at Abia in northern Uganda on Thursday, shooting and clubbing civilians to death or burning them in their huts.
"When they came they told us they were an army mobile unit," survivor George Odong, 34, told Reuters at the camp, which houses about 10 000 people sheltering from rebel attack.
The rebels were wearing similar camouflage uniforms to those used by the army, and spoke the northern Acholi language, helping them to blend in with residents, witnesses said.
"They were in fact showed around the camp, the militia barracks and even stood around and watched a soccer match," Odong said, describing an informal game between camp teams.
"We noticed something was wrong when the rebels started taking up positions around the camp," he said.
A gunfight broke out between the heavily-outnumbered guards comprised of armed residents organised into a militia force and several hundred rebels. The cult-like LRA has been waging war in northern Uganda for the past 17 years.
The LRA says it is fighting to improve the lot of the northern Acholi people but it has never spelt out its demands in detail. Observers point out that most of its victims are Acholis shot or hacked to death in raids on villages.
LRA leader, former altar boy Joseph Kony, manipulates beliefs in spirits to instil fear in his followers and has abducted thousands of children as sex slaves or fighters.
John Okello, 47, one of the Abia camp militiamen, said his men had shot dead at least six of the attackers and repulsed an initial assault, but the rebels had regrouped.
"One of our groups fought with the LRA for about an hour," he said, speaking outside a hut riddled with bullet holes. "They reorganised and attacked again from the other side of the camp which was not defended."
The rebels eventually retreated when regular Ugandan army troops arrived with reinforcements, including an armoured personnel carrier, but not before an estimated 50 people had been killed, according to medical sources.
The raid on the camp, more than 300km north of the capital Kampala, was one of the worst attacks in months by the LRA, who have staged a string of assaults despite an army offensive aiming to stamp out their rebellion.
The government, which has encouraged villagers to form militias to combat the LRA, urged grieving survivors to take a more proactive approach to self-defence.
"You just can't rely on the army you have to be vigilant, provide information, look over your shoulder," Northern Reconstruction Minister Grace Akello told reporters in Lira.