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UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

UGANDA: Karamojong raid aided by army, says spokesman

KAMPALA, 7 November 2003 (IRIN) - A recent Karamojong raid on a Local Defence Unit (LDU) in Kotido district, northeastern Uganda, was an "inside job" involving collaborators from within the army, according to an army spokesman.

"It is obvious there was collaboration between some of the people in the LDU and their clansmen. We are investigating," Maj Shaban Bantariza told IRIN.

On Sunday, the army recovered nine bodies of the soldiers who were killed during the daytime raid on 30 October. The assailants were reportedly from the Dodoth sub-group of the Karamojong, who live in the extreme northeast of the country.

The attack occurred in a village called Kaloto, near Kidepo National Park on Uganda's border with Sudan. "After the battle, the warriors looted a number of guns as the surviving soldiers fled the heavy fire," said Bantariza.

Army sources said the fact that 20 members of the LDU had been unharmed in the attack suggested that at least some of them had been involved. "How can you be attacked, but you don’t get injured, you just walk away?" remarked Bantariza.

He said the LDU soldiers may have regarded it as a form of self-payment. "There are problems in that they haven't been paid quickly enough," he said, "so we think they may have taken it upon themselves to supplement their incomes".

The Dodoth are among a number of Karamojong groups who rejected a disarmament programme carried out by the government in 2001, because, they claimed, they needed weapons to defend themselves from cattle raiders from neighbouring Kenya.

Bantariza told IRIN the army was in the process of reviewing LDUs in Karamoja with a view to preventing future attacks of the same nature.

Karamojong warriors and Ugandan army defence units have often exchanged fire in the volatile northeast. Last April, a number of skirmishes broke out between government soldiers and the Bokora sub-group after the army was deployed in a major operation to recover stolen cattle.

Theme(s): (IRIN) Conflict

[ENDS]

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