Kampala - Two travellers were killed and four critically injured in an ambush on Uganda on Tuesday, according to government officials.
The travellers' passenger vehicle was heading for the northeastern town of Soroti when it was ambushed by attackers suspected of being members of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebel movement.
The rebels have been fighting Museveni's government since 1988 - ostensibly to replace it with one based on the biblical Ten Commandments - but their campaign has been marked by brutality against the civilian population.
"The vehicle was ambushed between Atuboi and Aprir in Kaberamaido district, but the driver managed to drive through the ambush," said Musa Ecweru, a government official in the area co-ordinating a local campaign against the insurgents.
Teddy Ekiring said that her niece, one of the victims, was returning to Soroti from a business trip.
"She was the breadwinner at our home and the one paying school fees for the children. Now I don't know what to do," Ekiring said at Soroti hospital, where the bodies and the injured were taken.
There has been renewed skirmishes with rebels in the region in recent days after a lull that prompted government forces and President Yoweri Museveni himself to declare that the insurgents have been driven out of the region and back to northern Uganda.
Up to 1,2 million people have been displaced by the war. The latest displacement of 400 000 people took place in northeastern Uganda, which became the LRA's latest area of operation. - Sapa-AFP