A U.S. State Department draft report released on 3 February stated that up to 12,000 people had been killed by rebel violence and 20,000 children had been abducted over the course of the war. This was the first attempt to quantify the casualties from the LRA conflict, but did not include deaths from conflict-related malnutrition and disease. The spokesperson for the Ugandan military expressed doubt about the accuracy of the estimate: "They are simply giving a probing figure. They do not have accurate information. They want to cause us to come out and dispute them which we may not do." The government also admitted for the first time that it was recruiting former abductees and returning them to the battlefield. The army stated that around 800 former abductees have been recruited, hundreds of whom are believed to be below 18 years of age.