KAMPALA, Nov 8: Rebels shot and hacked to death scores of civilians in northern Uganda on Thursday night and Friday morning, beheading some of them, in apparent revenge for the killing of a rebel commander, the army said on Saturday.

The Vatican missionary news service said rebels of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) killed about 60 people on a rampage through Lira district, forcing some villagers to watch as they beheaded the corpses of fellow villagers they had just killed.

Local priests reported villagers as saying rebels had set fire to many huts with the inhabitants still inside but this could not be immediately confirmed.

“Scores of civilians were killed at around midnight on November 6 in Alanyi and Awayopiny villages in Lira district,” Lieutenant Chris Magezi, a spokesman for the army’s Third Division, told Reuters on Saturday.