UN condemns rebel attacks on civilians, urges gov't step up security

The United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator, Jan Egeland, has condemned recent attacks by the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) on camps for internally displaced civilians in northern Uganda and called on the government to redouble its efforts to protect the people living in the strife-torn area. A statement issued by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on Friday said over the past month, the LRA had killed more than 125 people in four separate attacks on camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs). "These vicious attacks against some of the most vulnerable civilians are appalling. In many cases, the victims have fled attack after attack, desperate for safety. I condemn these atrocities in the strongest terms and call on the Lord’s Resistance Army to stop all abuses against civilians immediately," Egeland was quoted as saying in the statement. In the latest attack, on 8 June, a group of about 100 LRA rebels attacked an IDP camp in Abok, Ngai sub-county, Lira District, killing 25 people including five children. They also kidnapped 26 others and burnt 600 huts containing food, said the statement. On 3 June, the LRA killed 23 people at Kalabong IDP camp in Namokora sub-county, Kitgum District, while 20 others were presumed to have been kidnapped. But the worst of the recent attacks occurred on 20 May, when the rebels killed 41 people at the Lukodi camp in Gulu District. Four days earlier, they had attacked another IDP camp at Pagak, also in Gulu District, killing 39 people, OCHA said. The 18-year-old war between the Ugandan army and the LRA has forced over 1.6 million people to abandon their homes and live in IDP camps scattered across the northern and eastern region. The LRA has also abducted thousands of children to fight within its ranks or to become sex slaves. OCHA said nearly 40,000 people, mostly mothers and their children, had become what was commonly known as "night commuters" - people who walked from their homes for hours every evening to take refuge in major towns, sleeping outside hospitals and community centres out of fear of LRA attacks. Meanwhile, the LRA had recently raided villages in southern Sudan, killing more than 40 people and displacing thousands, who had fled either to the garrison town of Juba in Bahr al-Jabal State, or other towns nearby, a local church leader told IRIN. The Rev Paul Yugusuk, a Sudanese clergyman with the local Lomega Anglican archdeaconry, said the rebels had attacked the villages of Lokiri, Goke and Lomer, which are located about 37 km southeast of Juba, and that at least 41 bodies of Sudanese victims had been counted by Thursday. The Ugandan army spokesman, Maj Shaban Bantariza, told IRIN on Friday that the army had used a helicopter to pound rebel positions five kilometres southeast of Nisitu, where 32 rebels were killed. "The group was under the command of senior LRA commanders, and when they were spotted by our surveillance units, we called in the helicopter that raided them and killed 32 of them. We rescued 20, mainly children, and recovered arms and ammunition," said Bantariza, by telephone.