Uganda

The Ugandan military said on Thursday it had freed 110 abductees, most of them children, held by the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and killed 50 of LRA fighters in the war-ravaged north of the country last month, said an army spokesperson in the northern town of Gulu, where the operations took place along with areas of Apac, Adjuman, Kitgum and Pader in the conflict-scarred north.

The policy shift towards ”abstinence-only programmes” to curb the spread of HIV/Aids could reverse significant gains made by Uganda in the fight against the pandemic, Human Rights Watch (HRW), has warned. In a new report, titled The Less They Know, the Better: Abstinence-Only HIV/Aids Programmes in Uganda, HRW said the government had removed critical Aids information from primary school curricula.

Bands of marauding baboons in eastern Uganda are forcing parents to keep their children at home to guard crops, causing rampant absenteeism in the region’s primary schools, officials said on Wednesday. More than 85% of children in Uganda’s Busia district are staying home from school due primarily to the menace of the baboons.

Rebels hacked to death six people in northern Uganda overnight as the army detained two opposition politicians for alleged collaboration with the insurgents, officials said on Thursday. The six adults and children were beaten and stabbed with machetes and hoes when the rebels from the Lord’s Resistance Army assaulted three villages.

Ugandan authorities have banned the internationally acclaimed women’s rights play The Vagina Monologues as an affront to public morality and threatened to arrest organisers if they follow through on plans to stage benefit performances. Information Minister Nsaba Buturo said the play has been deemed offensive and vulgar.

Fifty-two hippos have died of anthrax in a western Ugandan game park since the beginning of the year. The disease killed 250 in the same park in the second half of 2004, Deputy Tourism Minister Jovino Akaki Ayumu said on Thursday. Anthrax struck the park bordering the Democratic Republic of Congo last July.

The Ugandan government is certain of military success against the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) should the rebel group prove to be less serious about dialogue. ”Just in case they are not that serious, the UPDF [Uganda People’s Defence Force] will continue its offensive,” the minister told Parliament in a statement on Monday evening.

The Ugandan government said on Thursday that it has decided to halt its military operations against Lord’s Resistance Army rebels for 18 days on condition that they confine themselves to a designated area in the north as efforts to revive peace talks continue. The truce will take effect on Friday morning.

Up to 7 000 Congolese, mostly women and children, have crossed the border into western Uganda to flee fighting in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo region of Ituri in the past four days, officials and aid workers said on Friday. Aid workers are investigating whether another 10 000 Congolese crossed the border on Thursday.

New measures aimed at preventing the dumping of low-quality condoms in Uganda have resulted in shortages across the country. "After getting a batch of Engabu brand condoms recently with a bad smell, the process of allowing into the country consignments was lengthened," said Elizabeth Madra, National Aids Programme manager.

The current efforts to resolve the 18-year conflict in northern Uganda is "a historic opportunity to end the country’s humanitarian emergency", according to the United Nations emergency relief coordinator and under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs, Jan Egeland.

Uganda is ready to ask the International Criminal Court (ICC) to abandon its investigation in the war-ravaged north of the country if rebels there show a credible commitment to peace. The announcement came a day after President Yoweri Museveni declared a week-long halt to military operations against Lord’s Resistance Army rebels.

The Ugandan army and police have arrested a Roman Catholic cleric they accuse of collaborating with Lord’s Resistance Army rebels, church sources said on Tuesday. Army spokesperson Major Shaban Bantariza confirmed the arrest, but declined to comment further.

A cholera outbreak has killed two people and affected about 50 others in the largest camp for people who fled their homes to escape an 18-year insurgency in northern Uganda, the United Nations said on Thursday. UN investigations have shown that all household domestic water pots are contaminated with faeces.

Two people were killed and five injured when a commercial building under construction in a south-eastern suburb of Kampala collapsed, crushing the building-site workers, police officials said on Friday. ”The building went down as the workers were pouring the concrete mix on the third floor,” the Kampala chief fire officer said.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has said he doubted the United States’s strategies in Iraq, but he supported the war that ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein blindly, Ugandan Information Minister Nsaba Buturo said on Wednesday. Buturo said Museveni feared weapons of mass destruction would find their way to Uganda.

A conference exploring the evolving dynamics of small arms as the most pressing security challenge in Africa ended on Friday with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni calling on governments to address the causes of their use and proliferation. ”Small arms will not find a market if there are no unresolved issues in our midst,” he said

Police and army stormed a Ugandan government office where three gunmen had taken a Cabinet minister’s secretary and an unidentified man hostage on Wednesday. An Associated Press photographer heard shooting in the building and saw several bodies being taken out, but could not tell whether the people were injured or dead.

Hippos in a Ugandan game park are dying of a disease yet to be identified by scientists. Sixty have so far perished in the past two months, wildlife officials said on Tuesday. ”We have been finding the animals dead with saliva oozing out of their mouths,” said John Bosco Numwe, the chief warden of Queen Elizabeth National Park.