KAMPALA, Uganda - Three foreign missionaries of the Roman Catholic Comboni order were reportedly being held for questioning Thursday by military officials in northern Uganda after fighting broke out when they were meeting with rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army, a missionary news agency said.
It was not immediately possible to confirm the report from the order's Missionary Services News Agency, MISNA, with military or government officials.
The MISNA report said the agency's director Fr. Giulio Albanese and two other Comboni missionaries, an Italian and a Spaniard, were in good health and that, according to an unidentified "military source," they were supposedly being held for having taken medicine to the rebels.
The missionaries were said to have been caught when fighting broke out between government troops and the rebels, who declared a unilateral cease-fire on Aug. 24.
The day before, the government of President Yoweri Museveni offered the rebels a conditional cease-fire, provided they agreed to gather in designated areas near the Sudanese border and stop attacking and abducting civilians.
Meanwhile, a district official said Thursday that government forces had killed 17 rebels in a battle Wednesday in Lira district 290 kilometers (180 miles) north of Kampala.
It was not clear whether the battle near a school 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the district capital, Lira, was the same fighting reported by MISNA.
The agency indentified the other missionaries as Italian Tarcisio Pazzaglia and Spaniard Carlos Rodriquez Soto.
Lira Resident District Commissioner Charles Egou Ogur said the rebels have been attacking isolated villages in the district for the past week, holding villagers hostage in a bid to ward off serious attacks by government forces.
"We have been putting pressure on them, but we have not been successful because the rebels have been mixing among the citzens and using them as human shields," Ogur said by telephone from Lira.
He said 17 rebels were killed in the attack Wednesday, and four government soldiers were injured.
Leading members of Uganda's Roman Catholic clergy have been trying to organize peace talks between the government and rebels, who have been fighting to oust Museveni since 1987.
Until recently, Museveni, a former rebel leader himself, opposed any negotiations with the LRA, led by a shadowy figure named Joseph Kony.
Kony, who once claimed to be a spirit medium, launched his rebellion a year after Museveni, a southerner, had seized power in 1986 after a five-year bush war, putting an end to the political control of Uganda by northerners, mainly from the Acholi tribe.
In March, the Ugandan army, with the approval of the Sudanese government, moved into southern Sudan to root out LRA bases there, forcing the rebels back into northern Uganda.
Ronald Reagan Okumu, a legislator who has been involved in trying to arrange peace talks, said the rebels are balking at the government's suggestion that the talks be held in Sudan. "The peace process is still on track but it will not materialize easily."