Dec 14 (Reuters) - The governments of Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan on Sunday launched a joint military offensive against the Lord's Resistance Army bases in Garamba, eastern Congo, an army spokesman said. Here are some details about leader Joseph Kony and his Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels: WHAT HAS HAPPENED: * Thousands of people have been killed and 2 million displaced during the 22 years of fighting between Kony's rebels and the Ugandan government. The conflict has destabilised parts of oil-producing south Sudan and mineral-rich eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. * Last October LRA fighters carried out a series of raids near Congo's porous northern border with Sudan, looting homes and burning buildings in a pattern similar to months of violence. LRA fighters killed at least 52 people, and abducted another 159 children and 10 adults during attacks in northern Congo in September, that country's U.N. peacekeeping mission, MONUC, said. * A landmark truce was signed in August 2006 and was later renewed. But talks brokered by south Sudan collapsed last April after Kony failed to sign the pact as planned. * Mediators gave Kony until the end of November to give his final approval to the peace deal. However, he again failed to appear to sign a final peace deal and told traditional elders at the end of last month he would still not sign a final peace deal until an international arrest warrant for him is scrapped. * Kony is wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for his role in a conflict that has destabilised a swathe of central Africa. THE LRA AND A HUMANITARIAN CRISIS: * Self-proclaimed mystic Kony began one of a series of initially popular uprisings in northern Uganda after President Yoweri Museveni seized power in 1986. But his tactics of kidnapping recruits and killing civilians alienated supporters. * The LRA was infamous for abducting children for use as soldiers, porters and "wives". Although there are no universally accepted figures, the children are believed to number many thousands. Some are freed after days, others never escape. * Kony's force was once backed by Khartoum as a proxy militia, although Sudan said it cut all ties with it. Kony quit his hideouts in south Sudan in 2005 for the Democratic Republic of Congo's remote Garamba forest. * Many northerners reviled the LRA for its atrocities, but also blamed Museveni for setting up camps for at least 2 million people as part of his counter-insurgency strategy, fuelling one of the world's worst humanitarian crises. WHAT DOES KONY WANT? * Kony has said he wants to rule Uganda by the Biblical Ten Commandments, but at peace talks his group also articulated a range of northern grievances, including the theft of cattle by Museveni's troops and demands for more political power.
RNPS IMAGES OF THE YEAR 2008 People seek refuge from flood waters in east Nepal August 24, 2008. Twenty-four bodies have been discovered washed away by Koshi River at the Nepal-India ...
