Aid worker killed in road ambush

The humanitarian organisation World Vision International this week said it had suspended its relief operations in the Karamoja and Kapchorwa regions of eastern Uganda, following Wednesday's killing of its staff member. Davis Chelangat, a World Vision coordinator in the Karamoja region, was reportedly killed when suspected warriors ambushed and fired on the vehicle carrying him and others. Chelangat was reportedly returning from a peace mission to reconcile the cattle rustling pastoralist communities along the Uganda-Kenya border. A spokesman at the World Vision office in Kampala, the Ugandan capital, told IRIN that a team had been sent to the location where the incident had taken place, in order to establish the circumstances under which the aid worker was killed. In the meantime, he said, World Vision had suspended its operations in the region until the facts of the incident were established, and safety assurances received from the Ugandan government. "We would not want to continue in that manner without assurances that our staff will be safe," the spokesman told IRIN.