Aid groups on Tuesday urged the international community to avert a third consecutive year of massacres by Lord Resistance Army rebels in central Africa in the run up to Christmas.

They called on the United Nations Security Council to set up an expert panel to address the threat of the LRA.

In a report headlined "Ghosts of Christmas Past", an alliance of 19 aid agencies said the LRA, who have preyed on civilians for more than two decades, was the most brutal rebel group in central Africa.

"Today the LRA continues to attack marginalised communities in Sudan, Central African Republic (CAR), and DRC almost four times a week," the aid groups said in their report.

"These communities await Christmas with fear," added the groups, who include Oxfam, Christian Aid, Refugees International, World Vision and War Child UK, among others.

In 2008, the rebels killed 865 men, women and children in the northeastern DR Congo and in southern Sudan around Christmas, and kidnapped hundreds of others, the report noted. A year later 300 people were murdered between December 14 and 17, also in northeastern DR Congo.

The UN refugee agency said in October that the rebels had killed 2,000 people since December 2008, kidnapped more than 2,600 and displaced more than 400,000 in DR Congo, the Central African Republic and southern Sudan.

Marcel Stoessel, Oxfam's country director in DR Congo, said it was inconceivable that international leaders had tolerated such a brutal situation -- and had done so for the last 20 years.

"The acute suffering and mass population displacement the LRA has generated across international borders is undermining stability in an already fragile region, where southern Sudan is preparing to hold a landmark referendum on secession in early 2011," the report said.

The aid groups welcomed recent steps taken by the United States and the African Union to disarm the LRA, protect civilians and increase humanitarian aid.

But it said that kidnapped people had to be helped to return home, villages had to be protected -- for military action against the LRA carried the risk of devastating retaliation by the rebels against local civilians.

The aid groups also called for the UN Security Council to set up an expert panel as "there is a chronic lack of information about the motivation, composition and location of the LRA".

They insisted too, on the need to improve infrastructures and communication. "It is no coincidence that the LRA operates in some of the most remote and underdeveloped areas of Central Africa," it argued.

Uganda special forces are currently leading the hunt for LRA leader Joseph Kony, a mission that also includes forces from the Central African Republic, southern Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The LRA began their rebellion in northern Uganda in the late 1980s, but have not carried out an attack there since 2006.

Since south Sudanese-hosted peace talks broke down in late 2008, the rebels have roamed the jungles of central Africa, where they have been repeatedly blamed for the slaughter of defenceless civilians.

Kony himself is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Source: AFP