![LRA victim]()
Rebels chop off noses and
ears |
The
humanitarian situation in northern Uganda is worse than in Iraq, or
anywhere else in the world, a senior United Nations official has
said.
UN Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs, Jan Egeland
was speaking to the BBC after visiting the area affected by 18 years
of civil war.
"It is a moral outrage" that the world is doing so little for the
victims of the war, especially children, he said.
The rebels routinely abduct children to serve as sex slaves and
fighters.
Thousands of children leave their houses in northern Uganda to
sleep rough in the major towns, where they feel more safe from the
threat of abduction by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA).
The LRA, under
shadowy leader Joseph Kony, says it wants to rule Uganda according
to the Biblical Ten Commandments.
They often mutilate their victims, by cutting off their lips,
noses or ears.
"I cannot find any other part of the world that is having an
emergency on the scale of Uganda, that is getting such little
international attention," Mr Egeland told the BBC's Focus on Africa
programme.
'Victims beheaded'
Earlier, religious leaders from the area urged the United Nations
to intervene in the conflict.
"The United Nations (should) play a great role in scaling down
the violence by placing peace observers in the conflict areas," said
a statement from the Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative
(ARLPI), after meeting Mr Egeland.
LRA gunmen last week killed at least 40 people near the
north-eastern town of Lira, officials say.
Some 3,000 people have fled to Lira town following the upsurge in
violence.
An army spokesman said the latest attacks seemed to be an act of
revenge for the killing of rebel commander Charles Tabuley last
month.
Lira district resident commissioner Charles Egou told the BBC
that the 3,000 people were being housed in displaced person's camps
in the area.
"Scores of civilians were killed at around midnight on 6 November
in Alanyi and Awayopiny villages in Lira district," Lieutenant Chris
Magezi said.
![Children in a Ugandan church]()
Children prefer to sleep rough in town than
risk being abducted |
Catholic
missionary, Father Sabbat Ayele, told the AFP news agency that
witnesses had said the rebels had beheaded some of the victims while
a number of grass-thatched huts were set on fire.
Thousands of civilians have been killed and more than a million
others displaced by the fighting in northern Uganda alone.
Humanitarian organisations say that about 20,000 children have
been abducted by the rebels over the last five years, with many
taken to LRA bases in southern Sudan, where they are trained as
child soldiers while the girls are turned into sex slaves.
