WFP tries to recover food after rebel ambush

The UN's World Food Programme (WFP) is taking evasive action to clear 100 mt of its food aid from eastern Uganda’s war-torn Katakwi district, after an ambush on Thursday by the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) on three trucks carrying WFP food. At least two truck drivers were killed in the attacks, according to WFP sources. The third driver and other people in the trucks are still unaccounted for, but they are thought to have fled into the bush. A further two trucks managed to escape, heading back to Soroti, about 25km away, army sources said. The food was destined for Uganda’s northeastern Moroto district, in Karamoja, where a severe four year drought has ravaged the district’s Karamojong population. “Right now our priority is to protect the food and get it back on track to the people who urgently need it,” WFP coordinator for Karamoja Purnima Kashyad told IRIN. “As it is, it is a security risk – our biggest concern is that they [the LRA] could come back and steal the food. But we have the Ugandan army guarding it for us for now,” she said. She stressed that the drivers were not WFP staff, but commercial trucks privately hired to ship the food for WFP. “This is a road which we consider unsafe, and we strongly discourage drivers doing work for us from using it,” she noted. “These private trucks did have a WFP sticker on their sides, but I don’t think it was clearly visible from a distance,” she told IRIN. She said WFP was looking into making bigger, more visible emblems for vehicles privately hired to carry its food aid.