Up to 192 killed in Uganda as rebels torch civilian camp
By John Donnelly, Globe Staff, 2/23/2004

KAMPALA, Uganda -- A rebel attack on a camp of displaced people in northern Uganda killed as many as 192 civilians over the weekend, according to witnesses, in a dramatic escalation of the 18-year civil war here.

Monica De Castellarnau, country director for Medecins Sans Frontieres, said she talked with someone at the scene at the Barlonya camp yesterday who counted 192 bodies. A hospital in Lira, about 16 miles to the south, had admitted 51 injured people from the camp, most with severe burns, by midday yesterday, she said.

A Roman Catholic priest, Sebhat Ayele, told reporters that he visited the burned-down camp of grass huts yesterday. He said he counted 121 bodies and was told that 51 others had been buried.

The rebel group that carried out the attack, the Lord's Resistance Army, has been battling the government of Uganda for 18 years, mostly in guerrilla-type attacks.

Its leader, Joseph Kony, has built a militia of about 12,000 fighters; an estimated 80 percent are children whom his troops abducted from villages in the north. Often, according to fighters who have escaped from the LRA, he has forced the children to kill their parents or relatives so that their family will not want them back. Kony, who has said he has spiritual powers, aims to overthrow President Yoweri Museni and run Uganda according to his own interpretation of the Ten Commandments.