Rebels attack IDPs camp in Gulu District

Rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) attacked a camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in war-ravaged northern Uganda on Sunday evening, killing scores of people and abducting others, Ugandan army officials and humanitarian workers reported. The army spokesman, Maj Shaban Bantariza, told IRIN that 18 bodies had been found near the camp in Pagak, 18 km north of Gulu town, while three other civilians and three rebels had died in cross-fire between the army and the rebels. "A group of rebels attacked Pagak displaced people's camp in three prongs: one attacked the camp, a second one attacked the soldiers guarding it and the third one concentrated on the patrol units," Bantariza said. "The group that attacked the camp set ablaze dozens of grass-thatched huts to create confusion, then looted food and abducted people whom they forced to carry their loot for a distance before they killed them along with their babies." An official of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), which was carrying out programmes at the camp, said that 29 civilians were reported dead, including one who died at nearby Lacor hospital, where 12 wounded had been taken for treatment. "We have confirmed 29 civilians dead, but we don't know the figures for either the rebels or the army. Some people who were abducted were killed a distance from the camp and their bodies were found there," Caroline Ort, the NRC programme manager, who had just returned from the scene, told IRIN on phone from Gulu. Many IDPs, she added, had fled the camp, which was housing 12,000 IDPs. Some of those fleeing had gone to nearby camps while others had trekked towards Gulu town, 360 km north of the capital, Kampala. Ort said many of those killed were either shot or hacked to death during the attack that happened slightly after dusk. She added that an NRC team, which visited the scene of the attack on Monday morning, had found people busy burying the dead. According to Ort, between 150 and 200 grass-thatched huts were burnt in the IDPs camp, and various relief agencies were assessing the situation. There were, however, fears that the death toll "might climb to 34 because reports we have just receive indicate the discovery of five other bodies", she added. Last week, the Ugandan government rejected a report by an international organisation accusing it of failure to fulfil its responsibilities to defend people in northern Uganda, saying the report was "completely unfair". The report by the aid organisation, Christian Aid, condemned what it described as a shirking of the government's responsibilities to protect the people of the north "borne out of a lack of will". It accused the government of herding civilians into camps ostensibly to protect them from the LRA without offering those living in camps the protection they needed. The LRA has waged war against the Ugandan government for 18 years in the north, frequently attacking villages and trading centres, murdering or torturing civilians and abducting scores of children for forcible recruitment as soldiers, porters or sex slaves. In February, the rebels killed hundreds of IDPs when they attacked a camp in Barlonyo, near Lira town. The army blamed the deaths on the laxity of local commanders, who, it said, had allowed the IDPs to set up a camp in an area that was not well protected.