Notorious Lord’s Resistance Army Blamed for Massacre of Elephants

Notorious Lord’s Resistance Army blamed for massacre of elephants in African conservation park where ten died on one day alone

• Poachers killed 33 elephants recently in remote Congo park
• Three poachers died in gun battle with rangers at weekend
• Garamba National Park, Congo, a stronghold for LRA

The deaths of 33 elephants in a remote park in Congo has led to speculation that the rebel Lord's Resistance Army is poaching the animals.

Ten were killed last Friday in Garamba National Park, according to African Parks, a conservation group that manages the park along with Congolese authorities.

Park rangers killed three poachers in a weekend gun battle in Garamba, in Congo's northeastern corner near South Sudan.

Ten elephants were killed last Friday in Garamba National Park, according to African Parks, a conservation group that manages the park

‘We have reason to believe that the major poaching thrust is emanating from the heavily forested Azande Domaine de Chasse, which has been a traditional base for the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA),’ Peter Fearnhead, the CEO of African Parks, wrote in a letter to other conservationists that the news agency Reuters obtained today.

Warlord Joseph Kony, the LRA leader indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, waged a brutal guerrilla war against the Ugandan government in the north of the country for nearly twenty years before fleeing with his fighters into the jungles of central Africa around 2005.

 

A 2013 report from human rights group Enough Project said the LRA had begun systematically killing elephants and trading poached ivory for food, weapons, ammunition and other supplies.

Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord's Resistance Army, whose group may be behind the poaching of 33 elephants recently in Garamba National Park

Mr Fearnhead wrote it was not yet clear ‘whether the current poaching onslaught emanates from the LRA, Sudanese poaching gangs, local Congolese poachers, or a combination of these.’

Garamba is home to around 1,800 elephants, according to African Parks, and has been targeted by poachers in the past.

Twenty-two elephants were killed and their tusks and genitals removed in a single 2012 attack suspected of being carried out by the LRA.

However, the rebels' involvement in the killings was never confirmed and some harbour doubts that the LRA is behind the latest wave of poaching.

‘We hear the elephants were killed by professional poachers. That is not the LRA,’ said Rev Benoit Kinalegu, a Catholic priest who heads a network monitoring LRA attacks and movements from the town of Dungu on the edge of the Garamba park.

‘This area is so militarised it is impossible to know who it was,’ he said.

A 5,000-strong African Union Regional Task Force, supported by 100 U.S. Special Forces, is hunting for Kony and his commanders, who are accused of abducting thousands of children to use as fighters in a rebel army that has earned a reputation for mutilating its victims.

While Kony is believed to be hiding in a Sudanese-controlled area of a disputed enclave in South Sudan, according to the United Nations, his fighters continue to operate in an isolated zone straddling South Sudan, Congo and Central African Republic.