Ugandan army raid killed 66 children, charity reports
Children in Uganda suffer food shortages and poor health services, the charity reports
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Friday, 30, Mar 2007 08:07
Sixty-six children were killed in an Ugandan army raid last month, charity Save the Children reports.
The charity asserts it has met with 256 witnesses who gave accounts of soldiers shooting children in a raid on February 12th this year.
Many other children in the Kotido district in the north-eastern Karamoja region were fatally run over by army vehicles or crushed by stampeding animals.
"Reports of children being killed in indiscriminate, illegal and inhumane way are absolutely devastating," said Valter Tinderholt, country director of Save the Children in Uganda.
"Such allegations must be fully investigated and those involved brought to account,'' he added.
However Kampala denies the charity's allegations and insists that the raid was targeting armed cattle herders in the area, not children.
Spokesperson for the army in the region, Lieutenant Henry Obbo, told the Reuters news agency: "We discovered a hidden herd of thousands of stolen cattle. We went after them and the herdsmen, hardcore adult criminals, opened fire and we pursued them."
He added: "We never targeted children at any time."
Land-locked Uganda's conflict with the rebel Lords Resistance Army has seen 1.7 million people displaced in the country while Save the Children reports that food shortages, displacement of communities and poor access to health and social services leave millions of children vulnerable in the country.