Ugandan rebels have shot and burnt to death 192 people in a camp for displaced civilians in their bloodiest attack in years, a local official says. The killings by guerrillas of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a group based in lawless areas of neighbouring southern Sudan, cast fresh doubt on repeated recent assertions by the Ugandan government that its army is about to defeat the LRA. The chief administration officer of northern Lira district, Daniel Odwedo, said authorities had counted 192 bodies following the attack on Ogur camp, making it one of the worst killings in the LRA’s 17-year-old insurgency. “They have counted 192. I’m here at the hospital in Lira and this is the toll we have received,” Odwedo told Reuters on Sunday from the district’s capital, which bears the same name. In the Saturday evening attack rebels attacked the camp of 4,000 people with automatic weapons and hand grenades and then set fire to grass-thatched huts in which people were hiding, Odwedo said. A Catholic priest who works in the area earlier put the toll at 173. “I counted 121 bodies and the other 52 had already been buried in a mass grave by that time,” Father Sebat Ayala said by telephone from Lira town 190 miles north of Kampala.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan issued a statement calling the killing spree a “senseless massacre” and appealing “to all those at the national and international level who are in a position to stop the terrible cycle of violence in northern Uganda to do their utmost to protect innocent civilians.”
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 23 (Reuters) - U.N. agencies on Monday struggled to get emergency aid to several thousand people driven out of a camp in northern Uganda by Lord’s Resistance Army rebels who killed 192 people there in a weekend massacre. A U.N. relief team was due in northern Lira district on Tuesday to determine whether aid workers could travel there safely and to assess needs, U.N. officials said in New York.
The World Food Program was standing by with food supplies while the Ugandan Red Cross Society and other aid groups were preparing to provide shelter, the officials said. Local officials said the rebels attacked the camp for some 4,800 homeless Ugandans on Saturday evening with automatic weapons and hand grenades and then set fire to grass-thatched huts in which people were hiding. Victims were found burned, shot, bludgeoned or hacked to death, the United Nations said.
The survivors managed to escape by fleeing into the bush and were being relocated in the town of Lira and other nearby areas, the U.N. officials said. Lira district already houses some 120,000 people driven from their homes by the long conflict in northern and eastern Uganda, where the Lord’s Resistance Army has defied repeated attempts by the army to crush its 17-year insurgency. …
Local officials said the rebels attacked the camp for some 4,800 homeless Ugandans on Saturday evening with automatic weapons and hand grenades and then set fire to grass-thatched huts in which people were hiding. Victims were found burned, shot, bludgeoned or hacked to death, the United Nations said.
The terrorist acts of this fundementalist Christian group are absolutely shocking, yet for some reason it get's very little global coverage.
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*Originally posted by Malik73: *
The terrorist acts of this fundementalist Christian group are absolutely shocking, yet for some reason it get's very little global coverage.
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Hmm.. because it's Africa. Not because they're Christians
(though they're christians kinda like North Korea is Democratic)
Make a point without the baggage. Yes, what's happening is terrible. Sad fact is that not many people feel it effects them.
The title these attackers have may be 'fundamentalist christians', but you and I both know that this is not an act of someone following the teaching of Jesus Christ. Murder is murder and condemmed by all civilized people.
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*Originally posted by NotMT: *
The title these attackers have may be 'fundamentalist christians', but you and I both know that this is not an act of someone following the teaching of Jesus Christ. Murder is murder and condemmed by all civilized people.
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That is very true, and I am in full agreement with you.
I just wish there were more folk like you who would speak out against terrorists who commit such heninous crimes, in the name of Christianity?
Almost another dozen people killed by these terrorists…
**In northern Uganda the militia group known as the Lord’s Resistance Army has struck again. Local officials say 11 civilians have been killed in three new attacks. This follows last month’s massacre of some 200 people, but Uganda’s military says it is defeating the LRA and will end 18 years of war in months. **](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/3499774.stm)