Uganda survivors recount horror
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Ugandans walk around the charred ruins of the camp after the attack.
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LIRA, Uganda (Reuters) -- Samuel Ogwang returned to the ruins of his home to find his six-year-old son clinging to the back of his dead mother, hacked to death by rebels in one of Uganda's worst massacres in years.
Like other survivors of the raid on Saturday, Ogwang fled to a hospital in the northern town of Lira where he recounted his ordeal at the hands of Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) guerrillas.
The chief administration officer of the northern Lira district put the death toll from the attack at 192, many of whom were burnt to death in their huts, making it one of the worst raids by the LRA in years.
"I saw a line of rebels with new uniforms and boots in a line running towards the camp," said Ogwang, 30, describing the first moments of the attack on the Ogur camp for people uprooted by the fighting in northern Uganda.
"I could hear bullets as the guards tried to fight off the rebels, and explosions," he said, nursing his son Alex in a bed in the hospital overflowing with dozens of survivors suffering from gunshot wounds and burns.
Ogwang said he managed to flee into the bush to escape the rebels, but he was separated from the rest of his family in the panic as the LRA began torching huts, burning occupants alive.
His wife bundled their son Alex on to her back to flee, but was among those cut down by the guerrillas as they rampaged through the camp, slicing their victims with machetes, firing automatic weapons and tossing hand grenades.
Machete blows
Somehow, Alex managed to survive the machete blows raining down on his mother's back and spent the night clutching her body before his father found him on Sunday.
Other survivors told similar stories at the hospital, where the smell of disinfectant hung in the air as medics swabbed blood and pus from the cement floors where many of wounded lay on foam mattresses.
A small boy lay on a bed, his skin blistered yellow by a burn covering much of his face and torso.
A mother and her children arrives in Lira this month after fleeing rebels.
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The Ogur camp lies about 10 km (six miles) from the Abia camp, where LRA rebels killed about 50 people on February 5.
Molly Auma, 26, sat in the hospital with bandages over her right hand where she said her fingers had been blasted away by a grenade blast.
"The rebels came into my hut and shot me in my bed, but I managed to get out," she said, nursing her 10-month-old son who had sustained a bullet wound in his right shoulder.
"They chased me into a nearby house, but I fell on the floor. They thought I was dead so they let me go. I was carrying my baby on my shoulder and that's how he got shot as well."
Fighting between government forces and rebels had forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee into camps in northern Uganda, where the LRA has defied repeated attempts by the army to crush its 17-year insurgency.
Uganda's army chief vowed on Monday to hunt down the rebels, who overpowered about 45 local militiamen guarding the Ogur camp housing about 4,000 people.
The LRA says it is fighting to defend the rights of the northern Acholi people but has never made a detailed public statement of its demands.
The movement, led by self-proclaimed mystic and former altar boy Joseph Kony, has abducted tens of thousands of children for use as fighters and sex slaves.
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Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
