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| Sunday, 21 April 2002 |
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6,000 children missing as Uganda fights rebels NAIROBI, Saturday (Reuters) The United Nations food aid agency fears for around 6,000 children it says are missing after Ugandan troops overran rebel camps in southern Sudan, an official said on Friday. Laura Melo, the spokeswoman for the U.N. World Food Programme in Nairobi, said she feared the children might be lost or trapped in the fighting between Ugandan army soldiers and rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). "We are extremely concerned about the whereabouts of at least 6,000 children," Melo told Reuters. The LRA, led by self-proclaimed prophet Joseph Kony, has abducted at least 12,000 northern Ugandan children for use as slaves, wives or fighters since engaging the Ugandan army in a low intensity conflict. The LRA has been fighting for 14 years to overthrow President Yoweri Museveni's government and its stated aim is to rule Uganda according to the Biblical Ten Commandments. Ugandan troops launched operation "Iron Fist" in late March, attacking the rebels' camps in Sudan and sending them into flight. The Sudanese government sanctioned the operation but has played no direct role in the fighting. "The expectation of humanitarian agencies was that we could reach them by now, but we don't know where they are." Securing the release of thousands of children abducted by the LRA, reviled for cutting off ears and noses or padlocking lips to discourage villagers from collaborating with the Ugandan army, was one of the stated goals of Uganda's foray into the rebel camps in southern Sudan, Melo said. "So far there has been no evidence of the children, who had been expected to be met by aid agencies at Juba town," she said. As part of their initiation into rebel life, children, some as young as six, have been forced to hack to death fellow child captives who have attempted to escape. Boys are used as fighters or porters, girls as wives or slaves for the rebel commanders at their camps in Sudan. Earlier this week, Uganda's army said it had cornered the bulk of the LRA rebels, less than a month after chasing its fighters out of their main camps near the Ugandan border. But it said it needed more time to finish the operation. More than 300,000 children, mostly aged between 15 and 17 but some as young as 10 are thought to be waging war in some 40 different conflicts around the world. |
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