50 Die in Uganda as Militia Attacks with Guns and Spears

By The Associated Press

The New York Times

6 July 2014

KAMPALA, Uganda — More than 50 people were killed in clashes betweenUganda’s security forces and a tribal militia near the country’s border with the Democratic Republic of Congo, in what appeared to be coordinated attacks against police posts and military barracks in three districts, military and police officials said Sunday.

Ugandan troops killed at least 41 assailants, said a Ugandan military spokesman, Lt. Col. Paddy Ankunda. At least 12 people — mostly police officers and civilians — were killed by attackers armed with guns, spears and machetes, said Fred Enanga, a Ugandan police spokesman. Seventeen suspects were arrested, Mr. Enanga said.

The death toll from the clashes, which took place Saturday, could rise as Uganda’s security forces tried to arrest the fleeing assailants, who are suspected of being radical members of a tribal group that has long felt neglected by the central government.

The attacks took place in Kasese, Ntoroko and Bundibugyo, three Ugandan districts with a history of antigovernment insurgency and tensions among rival tribes competing for limited natural resources in a mountainous region of western Uganda.

Bundibugyo, where the most deadly attacks took place, is a frontier district about 180 miles west of Kampala, the Ugandan capital.

The attacks were most likely carried out by “radical elements” within a group known as Obusinga bwa Rwenzururu, whose members — from the Bakonzo tribe — have long had a tense relationship with the neighboring Bamba tribe, the police said.

Uganda’s military insists that recent violence has been set off by tribal tensions and deny a resurgence of rebel activity.

Military officials recently warned that a Ugandan Islamic extremist rebel group, the Allied Democratic Forces, which carried out a violent insurgency in the area in the 1990s, is trying to regroup. The group’s fighters now operate in eastern Congo.

Mr. Enanga, the police spokesman, said security officials were questioning the suspects to establish the motive behind Saturday’s attacks.

Angelo Izama, a Ugandan analyst with a regional research institute called Fanaka Kwa Wote, said that the Bakonzo and Bamba regularly fight over natural resources, especially farmland, and that some might feel that the security forces were not always fair arbiters in such conflicts.

He said it was possible that some police officers were being “individually targeted.”

Featured Image: Ugandan soldiers in the town of Bundibugyo on Sunday detained men suspected of belonging to a militia blamed for the violence (Reuters

Copyright 2014. The New York Times

 


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