Kampala — The UPDF says civilians in northern Uganda are much safer in the camps than they were in their villages.

Army spokesman Maj. Shaban Bantariza rejected a report by the international human rights body, Human Rights Watch (HRW), that the army had not taken enough measures to protect civilians in camps.

Bantariza also denied that civilians were often killed in UPDF bombings of rebel positions.

"When they were in the villages, they used to be killed and abducted in hundreds," he said. "But I will offer my job if Human Rights Watch can give examples of victims from camps in such big numbers."

Bantariza said the people in camps were vulnerable to snipers targeting a few people.

He said that although people in camps were not living in excellent conditions, it was a better evil than for them to be killed in their decent villages.

New York-based Human Rights Watch Wednesday released a paper on the war, citing specific examples of abuses in recent fighting.

The group says over the last few months rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army have repeatedly raided refugee camps, killing, in one case, more than 50 Sudanese refugees.

It quotes a case this month where LRA rebels attacked a village, burning dozens of people to death in their huts.

The paper says since May the rebels have increased their attacks in northern Uganda, abducting and killing civilians and looting villages, refugee camps and camps for internally displaced persons.

According to the group, the Ugandan army has responded to rebel fighting by evacuating tens of thousands of people from their villages, in preparation for bombing campaigns.

The group says local sources have reported civilians dying in the bombings.

"Civilians are not simply caught in the crossfire of this war, but have become the primary focuses of LRA attacks," said Jemera Rone, a researcher with Human Rights Watch's Africa Division. "The government has also not taken the necessary precautions to protect civilians."

HRW says, even where the security of the civilians is at stake or imperative military reasons require displacement, "all possible measures should be taken in order that the civilian population may be received under satisfactory conditions of shelter, hygiene, health, safety and nutrition".

"The standards of the Geneva Conventions have clearly been violated by the Ugandan government," Rone said.

As of September 2002, an estimated 552,000 Ugandans were displaced or at risk of having no harvest, at least 24,000 Sudanese refugees in Uganda had been forcibly displaced, unknown thousands of southern Sudanese were displaced inside Sudan, and refugee and displaced persons camps and supplies had been looted or burned.

Large numbers of civilians have been killed in this conflict since March 2002 in both northern Uganda and southern Sudan.