The Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) has terrorised northern Uganda since 1988 in its attempt to bring down the government of President Yoweri Museveni and put in its place a regime based on the Biblical Ten Commandments.

The LRA, the oldest and best known of the Ugandan rebel groups, is active along the frontier with Sudan and carries out most of its attacks in the northeast of the East African country.

The war, marked by the mutilation of civilians and the abduction of thousands of children into the LRA's ranks, has caused tens of thousands of deaths and driven some 1,2-million people from their homes.

After a couple of years of relative calm, the conflict has flared up again since 2002.

The fighting broke out shortly after Museveni rose to power in 1986, when the voodoo priestess Alice Lakwena took up arms to topple the new regime.

At the head of her Holy Spirit Movement, which mixed Christian and animist beliefs, she threatened the regime until the defeat of her followers by the army at the end of 1987.

Kakwena was succeeded in 1988 by an acolyte and relative, Joseph Kony, who headed first the United Christian Democrat Army of Uganda and then the Lord's Resistance Army, composed of remnants of the Holy Spirit Movement.

The army's principal means of recruitment is the abduction of village children.

The adolescent males are forced to fight, while the girls are forced to become sex slaves for the army commanders.

The UN Human Rights Commission denounced the LRA in 2001 for abuses including kidnapping, torture, forcible detention, rape, enslavement and the forced enrolment of children.

In 2003, Human Rights Watch issued a report based on the accounts of numerous witnesses describing the brutality practiced by the army on children it used as soldiers, servants or sex slaves.

But according to the New York-based rights group, the Ugandan army also recruits children as young as 12 to serve and sometimes fight in the ranks of village defense forces.

In nearly 16 years of fighting, more than 20000 children have been used as soldiers.

The LRA and the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) have long been at the root of discord between Uganda and Sudan, which broke diplomatic relations in 1995.

Kampala accuses Sudan of supporting the LRA, while Khartoum says Uganda has backed the SPLA since 1983.

But in 1992, the two countries reestablished diplomatic ties and signed an agreement, since renewed, authorising the Ugandan army to deploy units in the south of Sudan to search for and destroy LRA bases. – Sapa-AFP.