The Monitor (Kampala)
June 19, 2003
Posted to the web June 19, 2003
Monitor Team
Kampala
Rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) yesterday attacked Adjumani for the first time in 14 years.
They abducted 29 people there, including 15 Sudanese refugee children.
The Adjumani LC-V Secretary for Social Services, Mr Ben Anyamo, said that eight other people were abducted from Ofua sub-county.
Three more were abducted from the district administration quarters and two from the town.
Quoting a Roman Catholic priest and three girls who survived the raid, Mr Anyamo said that the rebels threatened to attack Adjumani again.
The Rome-based Missionary Service News Agency (Misna) reported that the six boys and nine girls were taken from an orphanage run by the Sacred Heart Sisters.
The children are aged between 7 and 15. The youngest boy, Francis, unwittingly asked to be abducted. He had been spared because he was asleep when the rebels arrived.
But he started to cry, awoken by the noise made by the other children who were being taken away by force.
The little boy then asked if he could join his colleagues. The attackers readily took young Francis away, the report said.
The Misna report said that the attackers in Adjumani were about 20.
Meanwhile in Katakwi, to the east of the country, Mr Joseph Kony's rebels killed one person and injured a Catholic priest at the Oditel displaced people's camp.
The LRA rebels shot at a vehicle driven by Fr Boguslow Zero, the parish priest at Acumet in Katakwi.
Their bullets killed Mr Moses Amou, a sub-county intelligence officer for Kapelebyong.
The two were reportedly fleeing from the Oditel camp, where the rebels had torched dozens of houses.
Fr Zero, a Polish missionary, escaped but the rebels also killed a Local Defence Unit soldier in Achawa.
The rebels also ambushed another vehicle travelling to Obalanga, killed its driver and injured four passengers.
The incident happened at Amusus near the Amuria county headquarters.
Fleeing villagers said that the rebels were making tents at Amusus where they have been camped since Monday.
They also returned to the Olwa camp in Orungo and burnt the huts that had remained after an earlier raid.
The Regional Police Commander, Mr Bob Ngobi, said that the LRA had on Monday also destroyed the police post at Obalanga.
Elsewhere in Lira, the rebels yesterday morning continued to terrorise parts of the district. They burnt an estimated 200 huts in two incidents in Aromo sub-county in Erute county and in Omoro sub-county, Moroto county.
Residents in Aromo said that some people were abducted but gave no numbers.
The army yesterday moved to reassure the country that the rebels are not making any significant gains.
"The LRA are simply trying to create the impression that they are all over the country," he said.
The army spokesman, Maj. Shaban Bantariza, said that the attacks are Mr Kony's propaganda to convince the world that the LRA has occupied the whole of northern Uganda.
Maj. Bantariza said that the UPDF promptly responded to the attacks in Adjumani.
He said that the army is pursuing the rebels to force them to free the captives.
According to Maj. Bantariza, only 12 and not 15 children were abducted from the Adjumani orphanage.
Truckloads of UPDF soldiers were yesterday seen driving through Lira town toward suspected rebel positions.
In another development, the Minister of State for Disaster Preparedness, Ms Amongin Aporu, has banned FM radio stations in Teso from airing news related to LRA attacks there.
She has also directed that the radio stations should not host discussions on the rebel attacks.
The minister has also stopped public meetings.
She has also banned the public from making phone calls into radio programmes.
Ms Amongin issued the directives on Tuesday at the Soroti District Council chambers.
She was addressing a meeting called by both the Soroti and Katakwi district officials.
Ms Amongin said that the hundreds of people who have been displaced by the LRA should not be accommodated in Soroti Municipality.
But Fr Athanasius Mubiru of Soroti Catholic Diocese told Ms Amongin that the people of Teso need their security to be settled once and for all.
He likened the present attempts by the government to maintain security in Teso as treating malaria and not killing the mosquito.
"The people of Obalanga have told me they don't want food, drugs or condoms but life. That must be guaranteed by security," the priest said.
The Katakwi Chief Administrative Officer, Mr Nicholas Ochakara, also complained that the UPDF took too long to respond after they were informed that the LRA rebels were planning to attack Katakwi.
He said that the information was delivered three weeks ago through one Maj. Komakech based in Katakwi.
By press time, the army had not engaged the rebels who now operate in a triangle covering parts of Kuju, Kapelebyong and Obalanga sub-counties.
A joint report by Richard M. Kavuma, Patrick Elobu Angonu & Patrick Ebong
