Uganda’s LRA attacks hinder South Sudan aid operations
Nov 22, 2005 (JUBA) — Rebel attacks on civilians in southern Sudan are preventing aid workers from helping the vast region recover from two decades of war, aid workers and officials said on Tuesday.
Earlier this month they also killed two mine clearance workers in the south, preventing key roads from reopening in one of the poorest areas in the world.
“They are trying to cut off the supply routes,” said a U.N. sources who declined to be named.
The LRA, operating from bases in southern Sudan, has terrorised civilians in northern Uganda in a long war to overthrow Uganda’s president, Yoweri Museveni.
But a recent agreement between Uganda and Khartoum to allow Ugandan troops to chase LRA fighters anywhere in south Sudan has forced them to go on the run in smaller cells.
The rebels are now heading west from those bases into more densely populated areas of Sudan where they might do even more damage, aid workers said.
David Gressly, a U.N. aid worker, said recent attacks had closed off a vast area for U.N. workers, now restricted to emergency operations only.
“Their modus operandi is literally to murder people,” said World Food Programme spokesman Simon Crittle, adding that the rebels had also started to target international aid workers.
The LRA has about 4,000 troops in the south, according to an estimate by Stans Yatta, head of the southern government’s relief arm in the regional capital, Juba.
“The LRA are a sickness to us in southern Sudan … Their numbers are increasing day-by-day because they are abducting children,” he said. He gave no details of the abductions.
Some 8,000 U.N. humanitarian staff and more than 10,000 peacekeeping troops are to be deployed by 2006 to help reconstruct south Sudan, where a long war between Sudanese rebels and Khartoum ended with a peace deal in January.
The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for five of their top commanders including leader Joseph Kony.
(Reuters)