Ugandan troops killed a leader of the Lord's Resistance Army, effectively the number two of the brutal militia, in the Central African Republic, military and intelligence officials said Saturday.

The troops killed Bok Abudema north of the town of Djema in the southeast of the Central African Republic on Friday, defence and army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Felix Kulayigye said.

"This was a New Year's gift to Uganda," Kulayigye said. "He was a notorious commander but his life has come to an end."

The LRA first appeared in northern Uganda in 1988 and have the reputation of being among the most brutal rebel forces in the world, using children as soldiers and sex slaves.

Successive Ugandan army operations have forced the group to move east into Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan and the Central African Republic.

Intelligence officials said that Abudema was effectively the second most senior commander of the outfit, led by war crimes-accused Joseph Kony, following the wounding about a year ago of deputy commander Okot Odhiambo.

"After Odhiambo sustained serious injuries, Abudema took over as the overall commander and deputy to Kony," one intelligence officer said.

The "rebel fighters we have captured know him as the person most senior after Kony until we got him", the officer said, adding: "To us at the moment he (Odhiambo) is immaterial because he is no longer a threat."

Abudema was the only casualty of the raid that killed him but troops recovered two women who had been with him, Kulayige said.

There was no independent confirmation of his death.

In November the same military spokesman said Ugandan special forces killed another senior LRA commander, Okello Kutti, in the Central African Republic, near its eastern border with Sudan.

And in September he said the army had captured a top bodyguard to Kony in the same country.
The Ugandan army has said it was pursuing the rebels in the Central African Republic, which has no border with Uganda, with that government's permission.

Last month UN human rights chief Navi Pillay demanded the capture of LRA leaders for crimes against humanity in new reports detailing an orgy of killings, torture and rape of hundreds of civilians by the group.

The reports, adding to the evidence of atrocities and LRA abductions of hundreds of women and children for use as sex slaves or porters, said the rebel leaders must be brought before the International Criminal Court.

Pillay's office said about 1,300 civilians were killed in dozens of LRA attacks in south Sudan and the northern DR Congo between September 2008 and June 2009.

It documented harrowing accounts of often "carefully synchronised" attacks on villages where civilians were slaughtered with a variety of bladed weapons or guns, mutilated, tortured and raped.

"These attacks and systematic and widespread human rights violations carried out by the LRA... may constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity," its report on DR Congo said.

"The international community, including governments in the region, should cooperate with the International Criminal Court to search for, arrest and surrender the LRA leaders accused of crimes against humanity," it said.

Kony and two other leaders are wanted by the ICC on 33 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The rebels and Ugandan government concluded peace negotiations in April 2008 but Kony has repeatedly failed to sign a deal already inked by the government.

(Source: AFP)