The fate of over 40 Roman Catholic seminarians abducted on Sunday from northern Ugandan Gulu district by suspected Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) remained unknown on Monday as the army said it was still pursuing the attackers.
Representative for the Ugandan army, Lieutenant Pady Ankunda said they were tracking the movements of the rebels and planned to force them into a fight, ”to give us an opening to rescue some of the children”.
LRA rebels raided Lacor Junior Seminary in northern Uganda on Saturday night, killed a child and abducted 41 boys and several other people.
The Rector of the seminary, eight kilometers west of Gulu, Monsignor Mathew Odongo, said by telephone that the church was yet to get any news about the fate of the children.
”We are in a state of helplessness, but we are trying to locate the rebels are and we are ready to go to the bushes and negotiate with them for the release of the children,” Odongo said.
Some local villagers, who stayed at the seminary’s compound at night believing it was safer than their homes, were also taken captive by the rebels.
Four soldiers guarding the seminary fled when the group of about 50 rebel fighters arrived. The rebels had seized 44 boys on Sunday, but three fled and returned to the seminary, Archbishop John Baptist Odama, who is in charge of northern Uganda’s Gulu archdiocese, said on Sunday.
The LRA has in the past carried out raids in northern Ugandan from its rear bases in southern Sudan. The LRA has been fighting against President Yoweri Museveni’s
secular government since 1988, to replace it with one based on the biblical Ten Commandments.
But the group is better known for brutally killing, maiming and abducting civilians, and has been condemned by a wide range of human rights groups and UN aid agencies. – Sapa-AFP