Ugandan rebels kill four at wedding party

KAMPALA, Jan 10 (Reuters) - Ugandan rebels shot dead four teenagers at a wedding party in the remote north of the country, a local official said on Tuesday.

About 15 gunmen from the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) attacked as revellers danced at a bar in Adjumani district in the early hours of Sunday.

"Three children were killed on the spot and a girl later died in hospital," district chairman Nixon Owole told Reuters.

He said all the victims were in their early teens. About a dozen people were wounded in the attack.

The army confirmed the incident. It said it had killed nine rebels in separate clashes over the past few days, including the leader of the group that carried out the raid.

The LRA, which has no clear political aims, has terrorised isolated northern communities for 19 years, uprooting more than 1.6 million people and triggering a humanitarian crisis.

Led by self-proclaimed mystic Joseph Kony, the cult-like group is notorious for massacring civilians, mutilating survivors and kidnapping more than 20,000 children who are forced to serve as fighters, porters and sex slaves.

In October, the International Criminal Court unveiled its first arrest warrants for Kony and his LRA deputies.