[Ugnet] Storm leaves Ugandan war-displaced in tatters

[Matek Opoko]

Storm leaves Ugandan war-displaced in tatters

July 30 2005 at 01:52PM

Kampala - Damage from a fierce storm has left some 5 000 war-displaced people with minimal shelter and destroyed food supplies at a camp in northern Uganda, United Nations and local officials said on Friday. The storm hit late Thursday at the Palabong camp for internally displaced people near the town of Gulu, the epicentre of the 19-year-old conflict between the government and the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), they said. "A heavy storm went through the camp... and up to 1 000 huts had their roofs blown away," Andrew Timpson, of the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Activities (OCHA) said by phone from Gulu. Each hut houses about five people, he said, adding that household goods and other items were also destroyed by the storm and that relief workers planned to visit the camp on Saturday to distribute aid to the affected families. Other sources in Gulu said stockpiles of food assistance for the war displaced at the camp which houses about 10 000 people, had also been destroyed in the storm. Tens of thousands of people have been killed and some 1,6-million others been forced from their villages into similar camps in the ongoing conflict between the Ugandan government and the LRA. - Sapa-AFP

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