WFP targets 27,000 displaced in Kasese for assistance

An assessment mission by the UN's World Food Programme (WFP) has established that between 2,000 and 3,000 children are in need of supplementary feeding and an estimated 24,000 more in need of food assistance among internally displaced people (IDPs) in Kasese district, southwestern Uganda. WFP food has already started arriving and distribution plans are in place, an emergency report by the agency, received by IRIN Tuesday, stated. The International Committee of the Red Cross is expected to provide non-food items to the displaced people. The official caseload of Sudanese refugees in six refugee camps in northern Uganda stood at 163,750 in early August, with WFP having removed food assistance to 10,486 more who were deemed self-sufficient in line with the recommendations of a WFP/UNHCR joint food needs assessment mission, the WFP report said. All refugees being assisted were in various phases of food ration reduction depending on the nature and degree of their vulnerability, it added. Meanwhile, insecurity in Bundibugyo has meant that WFP had not managed to get access to two of the IDP camps there, but it has verified 95,553 displaced in other camps in the district. Rebel ADF welcomes Kisangani feud The rebel Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) active in western Uganda have welcomed last week's fighting between the Ugandan and Rwandan armies, the Ugandan People's Defence Forces (UPDF) and the Rwandese Patriotic Army (RPA), claiming that the fighting was not about any "vital national security interest UPDF is defending" but how to share the loot being pillage from DRC. A spokesman for the ADF, Roger Kabanda, quoted by 'The Monitor' newspaper, also said the group did not get any support from Sudan, as Uganda has claimed, but captured most of its arms and ammunition from the UPDF. Kabanda also claimed that the Ugandan army had been "dealing summarily" with civilians accused of supporting the ADF in Kasese, Fort Portal and Bundibugyo, without due process of law, the paper added. Armed Karamojong warriors to be "shot on sight" An army brigade commander, Lt-Col Geoffrey Kakama, in the Ugandan People's Defence Force has warned that Karamojong warriors found loitering with guns along the highway are to be shot on sight, following incidents in which armed Karamojong warriors staged roadblocks and shot at vehicles on the Soroti Moroto highway, eastern Uganda, the semi-official 'New Vision' newspaper reported on Wednesday. A German national and hospital administrator for Matany, Guenther Nurich, had both his legs shattered in one shooting. Kakama said there was no justification for the Karamojong pastoralists to loiter with their guns on the highway.