Rebels kill 52 in dawn attack on Lira IDPs camp

In the most devastating assault on northern Uganda’s civilian population for several months, the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) attacked a camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Lira District on Thursday morning, killing 52 people and seriously wounding over 70, residents said. Many of the injured were in critical condition. The attack, on Abia camp, 28 km northeast of Lira town, took place at 05:00 GMT. The residents said a 300-strong army of LRA fighters stormed Abia and overwhelmed the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) units guarding it, before opening fire at random on its inhabitants. "The camp is in a state of total confusion. People are terrified and there is no one here to help them – they are crying and burying their dead, helpless and alone," Father Sebhat Ayele, a Roman Catholic priest of Lira municipality, who was evacuating the wounded to Lira hospital, told IRIN. The UPDF spokesman in the region, 2nd Lt Chris Magezi, told IRIN from Lira town that the scale the attack was unusual. "They don’t usually attack in such a large group and they rarely use these big machine guns and mortar bombs," he said. "They must have amassed new supplies from somewhere." But Magezi said that to his knowledge, only about 20 civilians had been killed in the attack. "Some of them [LRA fighters] infiltrated the camp and started beating the civilians," he said, noting that the commander responsible for the attack was a senior LRA leader called Odyambo. "While the others fled to Sudan, we knew he had decided to hang around in Uganda, but he has been hard to track," said Magezi. Two UPDF soldiers had been killed by gunfire in the attack and scores of huts housing the IDPs were set ablaze when the rebels fired mortar bombs into the camp, residents said. It was not immediately clear how many people the rebels abducted for recruitment or to carry loot, but several camp residents were reported missing or unaccounted for by Thursday afternoon. Ayele said 12 of the 44 dead were being buried by their relatives and eight of the 20 injured on the first convoy to Lira hospital, had died before reaching the hospital gates. "Some of the people were killed by bullet wounds, some were burned alive in their homes and others were beaten and hacked to death with pangas. This is terrible," Ayele told IRIN. He added that the evacuations for emergency medical treatment were taking time, because the rebels were still operating the area, making it risky to move to and from the camp. The attack comes barely two weeks after the government claimed to have "nearly defeated" the LRA, saying it had killed many of the group’s most senior commanders. "This latest attack is just a desperate attempt at getting publicity, because they know they are being crushed by our forces on the ground," Magezi asserted. On Wednesday, the Refugee Law Project, a Kampala-based advocacy group, issued a statement claiming that the LRA leader, Joseph Kony, was fighting for survival because he feared being killed if he surrendered or tried to negotiate. But the group noted that Kony still possessed a formidable arsenal, including shoulder-fired rocket launchers, making him "better equipped than many African armies". The statement argued in this context that government plans to scrap the amnesty for the LRA’s stop commanders would obstruct efforts to bring peace to the north. The study was based on interviews with 900 people, including UPDF officers, IDPs, religious leaders and ex-rebels. The LRA says it is fighting to overthrow the government of President Yoweri Museveni and replace it with one based on the Biblical Ten Commandments. But the group’s attacks have mainly targeted civilians from the Acholi tribe. Museveni has sought international help to track down the LRA. Aid agencies estimate that 23,000 people have been killed both by LRA and UPDF in the 18-year-long civil war. Last year, the LRA abducted 8,500 children, whom it forcibly recruited as porters, soldiers or sex-slaves. LRA terror tactics in the north have sent 1.2 million people fleeing into makeshift IDP camps. The international medical aid organisation, Medecins Sans Frontieres, said in a statement on Wednesday that among the 33,000 IDPs who had sought refuge in the northeastern Ugandan town of Amuria since June 2003, health needs were serious, with many children suffering from severe malnutrition. People were dying at twice the rate of that considered an emergency threshold, it said. Another 230,000 people had sought refuge in nearly 50 makeshift camps in Lira since November, but only 20 of the camps were accessible. "As fighting between the Ugandan army and the LRA continues, hundreds of thousands of civilians are exposed to brutal attacks. Witnesses have testified to particularly violent, large-scale abuses against civilians, including murder, mutilation, abduction, and rape," MSF said. "In this atmosphere of terror, civilians are forced to choose between staying in insecure villages and towns, thereby risking another attack that could cost them their lives, or fleeing to urban areas that cannot offer them even the minimum conditions necessary to survive."