Renewed LRA attacks threaten aid deliveries

Recent roadside ambushes and attacks carried out by the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in northern Uganda are threatening the delivery of much needed humanitarian services to thousands of displaced people in the region, humanitarian sources said. In the latest incident, the LRA intercepted a truck hired by the British NGO ACORD to deliver non-food relief supplies from the main northern town of Gulu to neighbouring Kitgum. The driver of the truck was killed, and property worth over US $6,000 dollars burned in the attack, which took place on Thursday, according to George Omona, ACORD's programme manager. "We were trying to send in non-food items to Kitgum. About 35 kilometres from Kitgum, the truck was ambushed," Omona told IRIN on Friday. He said the LRA had on Thursday night also destroyed a vital bridge on the road linking Gulu and Kitgum, further complicating relief operations in the region and forcing all relief vehicles to travel a longer route through Lira District. "For the next few days, we can't use the Gulu-Kitgum road," he said. The LRA, a group whose beliefs are rooted in Christian fundamentalist doctrines and traditional religions, has been fighting President Yoweri Museveni's government since 1987, with the aim of establishing its own rule based on the Biblical Ten Commandments. The group has typically attacked villages in the north, killing and abducting. Meanwhile, a British-based international movement of northern Ugandans in exile - Kacoke Madit - has urged all parties to pursue peaceful methods of resolving the conflict, as opposed to a military solution. "Civil society, the Ugandan government and LRA should reflect together on the critical need and conditions for the establishment of durable and sustainable peace in all parts of Uganda as a priority," the organisation said in a statement on Friday.