- The recent spate of attacks on civilians in northern and eastern Uganda by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels has raised fears that the brutal 19-year old conflict is "not yet over", a top religious leader in the region said.

"We have in the past been hoodwinked that rebel activities were on the wane, only [for such activities] to resurface with renewed vigour and brutality. Widespread attacks in many areas are not the signs of a group weakened," Archbishop John Baptist Odama said on Wednesday.

"I have just returned from touring camps around the district of Kitgum, and the people are telling us that the LRA is there but the rebels are quiet," Odama told IRIN from Gulu town, 380 km north of the capital, Kampala.

The Ugandan army spokesman, Lt-Col Shaban Bantariza, confirmed the recent attacks but said there were no fatalities, adding that the army was investigating whether the attackers were actually LRA rebels.

Odama urged Ugandan military commanders and government security officials to stop what he called "provocative statements".

"Whenever our officials, like commanders, make statements like 'we have defeated these people,' they [the LRA] respond by carrying out some attacks and the people are the ones suffering," he said.

An analyst, however, said the LRA could be attempting to wear down the Ugandan army by deploying widely in smaller groups that were more difficult to track down.

"The LRA's strategic moves are unclear but it seems the strategy is to keep the government forces as stretched as possible," Fred Guweddeko, a researcher at Kampala's Makerere University Institute of Social Research, said. "Moves into new and old areas where they have been operating are not meant to capture territory."

He added: "The LRA tactics are meant to keep the government forces on the move because the rebels move in small groups of 10 to 20 people - a strategy to weaken the government forces by whatever means without actually confronting them."

On Monday, a group of LRA rebels ambushed a pick-up vehicle in Kitgum district, some 450 km from Kampala, killing five people and injuring at least two others.

A relief official in Kitgum town said the vehicle was headed to a nearby trading centre when it was ambushed; the driver was killed when the rebels set the vehicle alight.

The country director for the UN World Food Programme in Uganda, Ken Davies, told IRIN: "The situation is confusing. We just need to wait and see [but] I think it will be temporary."

Davies said the rebels seemed to be heading further north and trying to cross the border into southern Sudan from northern Uganda.

Lars Skaansar, a UN humanitarian access advisor, said the rebels burnt between 30 and 40 grass-thatched huts before they fled and moved further north towards the border with Sudan.

Last week, local authorities in the eastern sub-region of Teso reported the re-appearance of LRA fighting groups, which launched attacks at the weekend on a civilians' camp for the displaced in the new district of Amuria.

The attack came after more than a year of calm in the region which had prompted displaced people to begin moving to smaller camps near their homes. Others had started venturing back to their homes.

Soroti District Commissioner Musa Ecweru blamed the weekend attack, which killed four people including a member of a local militia, on negligence by local army commanders.

A local leader in the eastern Katakwi district said occupants of Angica camp, which houses an estimated 600 people, had fled in fear that the rebels were still in the vicinity and could launch another attack.

"They burnt huts and destroyed food items and the people had no alternative but to flee," the official said.

Another observer said it was unclear how the LRA had recently managed to simultaneously deploy fighters to the country's eastern and northern regions, send a group to the Democratic Republic of Congo and at the same time fight inside southern Sudan, where they have bases.

In September a group of rebels led by the LRA's deputy commander, Vincent Otti, moved into the northeastern region of the DRC, adding a new dimension to the already volatile relationship between Uganda and her western neighbour.

The war in northern Uganda pits the LRA, led by self-proclaimed mystic Joseph Kony, against the government of President Yoweri Museveni. The rebels claim they want to remove Museveni from power and install a government founded on the Biblical Ten Commandments.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed and some 1.6 million forced to live in internally displaced persons' camps scattered across the region. The rebels have abducted more than 20,000 children and either recruited them to fight or forced them into sexual slavery.