African troops capture junior LRA rebel commander

KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) — African troops captured a junior commander with the Lord’s Resistance Army and rescued 10 people, mostly children, abducted by the rebels, Uganda’s military said Tuesday, the latest blow against the rebel group in an international hunt for its fugitive leaders.

The commander — a rebel lieutenant known as Charles Okello — was seized after a firefight in Central African Republic, where Uganda-led African Union troops are hunting down the rebels in vast jungle, said Ugandan military spokesman Lt. Col. Paddy Ankunda. Up to 10 civilians, seven of them children, were rescued from the rebels, he said.