Human Rights Watch says Lord's Resistance Army rampage killed 321 in the Congo

The Guardian reports that a Ugandan military spokesman denied that there had been a significant attack in the region, saying "we do not believe that the LRA has the numbers or the time to kill 300 people in Congo." But United Nations officials, who reached the site of the attacks this month, confirmed to the Guardian that a massacre occurred.

[The United Nations investigators] recorded the names of 100 victims and 150 abductees. But Todd Howland, director of the UN's joint human rights office in Congo, said the Red Cross had reported burying 250 people and the death toll was likely to be higher. "A figure of 321 does not sound exaggerated," he said. "It could be more than that."

BBC News also corroborated reports of the attacks in a video report, in which they interviewed several witnesses from villages in the region. The LRA's devastating march in December is not without precedent. Just a year before, in the aftermath of an unsuccessful airstrike by US-backed attack on the LRA's camps by Ugandan forces, the LRA killed some 900 villagers and displaced thousands more during its retreat. One of the survivors told The Christian Science Monitor that the LRA leadership ordered "total war against the population" in revenge for the airstrike. The New York Times suggests that the report of the LRA's December massacre might spur new efforts from the US government, which was already concerned about the group.

Even before the news of this attack emerged, American officials had been increasingly concerned about the Lord’s Resistance Army, which has not had a discernible political agenda for years and has become infamous for its brutality. The Senate recently passed a bill calling for a more coherent strategy against it, and American officials in Uganda have been pushing for more support for the Ugandan military, seen as the most capable and disciplined in this area. “As long as the L.R.A are out there, this is exactly what they will do — kill a lot of people,” one American military official said.

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