The head of UN peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of Congo called Monday in a BBC interview for a new strategy to stop massacres by Ugandan rebel group, the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA).

The appeal came after Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Sunday the rebel outfit was behind a previously unreported four-day attack on villages in northeast DR Congo last December, which left more than 300 civilians dead. The LRA, however, has denied that it had taken part in the massacre.
 

Alan Doss, head of the United Nations peacekeeping mission in DR Congo, said the LRA's practice of working in small, mobile groups meant improved intelligence gathering and air mobility were needed.
 

"We have to look at this as a problem dealing with small groups that move around a great deal," he told the broadcaster.
 

"This requires better intelligence gathering, it requires particularly air mobility, and of course cooperation with the local people."
 

He added: "It didn't just happen in one place because... the LRA moves around a lot and these are small units, but of course they can inflict terrible damage.
 

"But even small groups, moving as they do in the bush, can create havoc. Their best weapon is fear and they create fear by their extremely brutal and violent tactics which we saw again in this latest massacre near Tapili."
 

In a report released in Kampala, HRW said the rebel group killed at least 321 civilians in the December 14-17 attack in the remote Makombo area of northeastern Haut Uele district.
 

A total of 250 others, including at least 80 children, were abducted, according to the rights group.
 

"During the well-planned LRA attack," the rebel outfit "killed at least 321 civilians and abducted 250 others, including at least 80 children," said the HRW report headed "Trail of Death: LRA Atrocities in Northeastern Congo."
 

"The vast majority of those killed were adult men, whom LRA combatants first tied up and then hacked to death with machetes or crushed their skulls with axes and heavy wooden sticks," said the report, written after a mission visited the region in February.

The LRA, however, has denied HRW's allegations.

"These claims of massacres coming almost four months late are yet another fabrication by NGOs, which are advocating war," Justine Labeja, LRA's Nairobi-based spokesman, told Reuters. "Yew, we are in Congo but we have no problem with the Congolese people or its government and we continue to call for a ceasefire to end this war."

Source: AFP