Shot and beaten, Ugandan child survives rebel raid
LIRA, Uganda, Feb 6 (Reuters) - When Ugandan rebels stormed into a refugee camp and shot or hacked to death around 50 people on Thursday, Anna Akoka was certain that her three-year-old son was among the dead.
"The rebels started hitting my child in the head with a machete," the 30-year-old mother said on Friday, recounting her ordeal in one of the worst attacks by Lord's Resistance Army guerrillas for months.
"I ran to him and picked him up, but the rebels kicked me down, and the baby fell out of my hands," she said, speaking on Friday in a ward overflowing with survivors nursing wounds from gunshots, grenade blasts and machetes sustained in the raid.
"They shot him in the arm and when I saw them shoot him I thought he was dead and I ran away. When I returned in the morning he was still alive," she said, cradling her son, Joseph, who was taken to the hospital for treatment.
Medical charity Medecins sans Frontieres said 51 people were reported to have been killed in the attack when rebels firing mortars and rifles stormed a camp housing at least 10,000 people forced to flee fighting in northern Uganda.
Medical staff at the hospital treated more than 60 people wounded in the raid on the camp at Abia, which is over 300 km (180 miles) north of the capital Kampala.
Survivors told how rebels had burst into the camp, burned huts and sprayed gunfire at the inhabitants, or beat their children as they watched, powerless to intervene.
"They battered him with the butts of their guns, and kept hitting and hitting and hitting, and I thought they wouldn't stop," said Joanita Akumu, nursing her three-year-old son Owour.
His face was so swollen by the beating that his eyes were reduced to slits. "They stopped when they thought he was dead and went away," she said.
Some of the wounded fled the camp and spent the night sleeping in the bush for fear of attack before making the 30-km (18 mile) journey to the hospital in Lira on Friday.
Many of the women and children sustained burns when the huts they were hiding in were torched, while gunshot wounds were more common among the men, hospital staff said.
Northern Uganda has witnessed an upsurge in attacks by the LRA rebels despite intensified attempts by the army to stamp out their 17-year revolt, led by self-proclaimed mystic and former altar boy Joseph Kony.
The cult-like group has abducted thousands of children for use as fighters or sex slaves during its rebellion, which it says aims to win a better life for the northern Acholi people, who however bear the brunt of its attacks. The group has never made a detailed statement of its demands.
02/06/04 11:58 ET
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