CRS laments killings on treacherous northern road

The NGO Catholic Relief Services (CRS) on Tuesday named the staff member killed, in what it called “a vicious attack” on its vehicle by an unidentified armed group in northern Uganda on Saturday, as Onen Joseph Clay. The CRS driver/mechanic was killed along with five other community members from the town of Nimule, in southern Sudan, who were all part of “a heroic team that operates in Nimule, carrying out the agency’s programme to support vulnerable internally displaced people and communities in the Eastern Equatoria region of Sudan,” the agency stated. The attack took place Saturday morning, 1 September, along the Nimule-Adjumani road in northern Uganda. Ugandan army spokesman Lt-Col Phineas Katirima told IRIN on Monday that he strongly suspected the attackers were from the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), who are active in the area. “They always target helpless people and never attack army units. It is consistent with their character,” he said. Although the UPDF was deploying forces to guard against rebel attacks in the north, it did not have the resources to “defend every inch of ground”, he added. Executive Director of CRS, Kenneth F Hackett, extended the NGO’s sympathy to Clay’s family, noting that this most recent killing illustrates the dangers increasingly faced by humanitarian workers. “This is an extremely complex area of operations for CRS, with the only access in and out along a highly treacherous stretch of road from Uganda into southern Sudan,” Hackett said. “Our CRS staff and facilities are unarmed and present easy targets for armed aggressors,” he added. Since 1983, Sudan has been engaged in a civil war between the government in the north and rebels in the south struggling for the right to define themselves culturally, religiously and politically; thus far, the war has claimed more than two million lives and displaced an estimated four million people, CRS stated. [for more details, go to: http://www.catholicrelief.org]