Northern Uganda "stretched to the limit"

Unrelenting attacks by the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) have created a "horrendous" humanitarian situation and stretched local resources in northern Uganda beyond their limits, according to a UN report. Since the entry in June into northern Uganda of an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 LRA combatants, the humanitarian situation in northern Uganda had degenerated to emergency levels, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said. Insecurity meant aid agencies had been forced to scale down many of their activities, worsening the already fragile situation in displaced people's camps and villages, it added. The few urban and rural centres still considered safe were becoming congested with people seeking safety, stretching local capacities to the limit and posing serious health and safety risks to hundreds of thousands of people without shelter or access to basic services, it stated. The main towns in the region - Kitgum, Gulu and Pader - had become overcrowded with displaced people seeking refuge in hospital grounds, schools, churches and shop verandas, the report added. For example, Lacor hospital in Gulu District, was hosting an estimated 40,000 people every night during July, although this number had reduced significantly by the end of August. Despite the high-levels of insecurity, the World Food Programe (WFP) had been able, with enhanced military escorts from the Ugandan army, to deliver food to the 40 scattered and isolated camps in the three war-torn northern districts. According to WFP, however, a serious complication of the current insecurity was the likelihood that the 522,000 displaced people would lose both their current harvest, and the smaller second harvest, as they were unable to access their fields. Sudanese refugees communities located near to the Uganda-Sudan border had also become increasingly fearful of sustained rebel violence against them. 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. The Uganda People's Defence Force has since March this year been waging a military campaign - dubbed Operation Iron Fist - against the LRA in southern Sudan with the permission of the Sudan government.