Uganda cattle raids kill at least 12
KAMPALA, March 18 (Reuters) - Heavily armed cattle raiders killed at least 12 people in northern of Uganda near the border with Sudan in three separate attacks on villages, the army said on Thursday.
Local authority sources in the Kidepo Valley national park said Karamojong raiders had killed 60 people during the attack but an army spokesman said the figure was too high.
"The number we have verified based on bodies recovered is 12. Sixty is too high a figure," said David Mbiire, the army spokesman for eastern Uganda.
Mbiire said nomadic Karamojong tribesman living near the border attacked neighbouring Karamojong clans in Kidepo.
Army sources say such raiding expeditions, often accompanied by gunfire and leading to scores of deaths, are common in the region, in spite of government efforts to dissuade "warrior" communities from attacking each other.
"This was standard practice," Mbiire said. "The army has since stepped in to deal with them. Thirty-four rustlers have been arrested."
Local officials played up the magnitude of the attacks.
"I don't know how many were involved, but I've heard it was a large force," a local information officer Michael Okello told Reuters from Kidepo. "The number I have been given by the villagers is over 60 killed in the raid."
Uganda's Minister of State for Karamoja Peter Lokeris said: "This incident is regrettable but security forces have restored calm. We shall have to investigate to determine the numbers who have perished."
Cattle rustling is only one of the sources of grief for villagers in northern Uganda. They are constantly subjected to bloody attacks by rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) which is active in the region.
Listed by Washington as a terrorist group, the LRA has spread fear throughout northern Uganda in its 17-year-old insurgency, paralysing economic activity in the area and defying repeated attempts by the Ugandan army to crush the revolt.
03/18/04 12:46 ET
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