BANGUI, March 28, 2008 (AFP) - Marauding rebel fighters attacked villages in the Central African Republic in which dozens of women have been raped and 150 civilians -- including 55 children -- taken hostage, the US said Friday.

Toby Lanzer, the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in the land-locked country, said the atrocities 'bear all the hallmarks of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA)', a notorious rebel movement from neighbouring Uganda.

A UN investigation into attacks on four villages between February 9 and March 10 found that men and women were tied at the hips with ropes, and forced to march from their homes carrying stolen food and supplies.

All 55 of the kidnapped children, many of them under-15, are still missing, although 40 adults have been released.

Several of the freed women said they had been gang-raped, and heard other girls 'scream at night at the hands of their abductors,' the report stated.

'There is an urgent need to protect civilians from these predatory bandits,' said John Holmes, United Nations under secretary general for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, in a statement.

The investigation found that more than 300 armed men attacked the villages of Bambouti, Gbassigbiri, Ligoua and Obob, along the Central African Republic's border with the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan.

'The mode of the attacks and languages spoken matches the tactics of the Lord's Resistance Army of Uganda,' the report found.

The leader of the Lord's Resistance Army, Joseph Kony, is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague for war crimes and crimes agaisnt humanity.

The government has confirmed that fighters entered the country, although it was unable to positively confirm they were LRA. Uganda has said it has 'reliable information' the fighters were from the LRA.

In late February, Uganda said it had signed an accord with the LRA which would see the armed militia group disarm, demobilise and be reintegrated into society.

This would be the last step before a formal peace accord scheduled for April, although it has not been signed by Kony.

The region where the attacks took place, populated by around 60,000 residents, is relatively peaceful compared with the north of the country, where conflicts have created 300,000 refugees.

However, it is still lawless and afflicted by roaming armed groups, including heavily-armed Sudanese poachers.

The UN report said assailants have threatened to strike again, prompting many villagers to sleep rough in the bush, while the authorities are unable to protect the population from further attacks or provide health care.

The civil war in northern Uganda has claimed tens of thousands of lives over the past two decades, and resulted in the displacement of nearly two million people. Talks between Kampala and the LRA began in July 2006.

acp-pgf/ff/pyj/mat/dc