(AFP) -- At least 82 of the 100 schoolgirls kidnapped in northeast Uganda by rebels have been found, after some were rescued by the army and others set free by their captors.

"Only 18 of the abducted girls from Rwara Girls Secondary School are still missing, the rest have been recovered," Soroti district council chairman Captain John Otekat said Wednesday.

Otekat said the army was still looking for the rest of the girls, who were abducted on Tuesday by Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels.

Otekat said that the rebels had on Wednesday morning also ambushed a vehicle heading for Soroti from Katakwi district and wounded five occupants, who were all admitted at Soroti hospital.

Heavy gunfire was heard again in Soroti town overnight on Wednesday and a Catholic priest, who asked not to be named, said the LRA rebels had tried to stage another attack on the town.

Army spokesman Major Shaban Bantariza confirmed the shooting, saying that the army had exchanged gunfire with a group of rebels that attempted to attack Roman Catholic Mission's Madela School.

"We exchanged fire with them and they run away," Bantariza said.

The LRA has been fighting government forces since 1988, ostensibly to replace President Yoweri Museveni's secular regime with one based on the biblical Ten Commandments.

But their campaign has been notorious for its brutality against the people of northern Uganda, as it was characterized by abductions of boys, who are forced into rebel ranks as soldiers, and girls who are turned into concubines for rebel commanders.

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