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Lira (Agenzia Fides) – Hundreds of children, victims of years of war in northern Uganda are denied urgent assistance because of lack of funds and adequate medical service, according to the Northern Uganda Transitional Justice Working Group. “We have registered at least 1500 cases requiring plastic surgery, minor and major, but because of restricted resources only 300 operations can be carried out ” said the Group chairperson, Hellen Elengat Acham. The rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) have terrorised the people of northern Uganda since the early 1990s reaching as far as Sudan, Democratic Congo and the Central African Republic. At least 15,000 people are displaced and more than 5,000 Congolese refugees live in camps in the Central African Republic, while in the Democratic Republic of Congo abduction of children continues. In the past six months in the eastern province, at least 102 civilians were killed every month by the rebels. In rebel attacks on villages in the area between December and March, at least 302 people, including 125 children, were captured and many civilians were mutilated, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs OCHA. The Lord's Resistance Army is notorious for its brutality and for forcefully enlisting children as soldiers or sex slaves or porters. And this violence continues to feed a growing humanitarian crisis.(AP) (13/7/2010 Agenzia Fides)
