Agenzia Fides REPORT - “There are at least four villages in Western Equatoria where people live in real fear of new attacks by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA),” Bishop Edward Hiiboro Kussala of Tombura-Yambo, southern Sudan, tells Fides. Several aid agencies have issued warnings in recent days about possible attacks by the Ugandan guerilla group which controls a vast area stretching from south Sudan to the south-eastern Central African Republic, passing through the north-east of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
“We fear attacks both during the Christmas period and in early January, when a referendum on the independence of southern Sudan is to be held,” said Bishop Kussala. “Right now the population is increasingly concerned about possible violence by the LRA. So-called “Arrow Boys” have been set up as self-defense militias, armed only, however, with bows and arrows.”
Bishop Julian Andavo Mbia of Isiro-Niangara, Equatoria province, in north-east DRC, tells Fides that in his region, “the alarm is issued in the face of possible attacks by the LRA as a form of prevention. At the moment we have no concrete evidence of actual attacks by the Ugandan guerrillas in our diocese.” At Christmas time in 2008, in a series of attacks in some villages in the province of Equatoria, LRA guerrillas killed about 900 people and abducted another 700.
“We fear attacks both during the Christmas period and in early January, when a referendum on the independence of southern Sudan is to be held,” said Bishop Kussala. “Right now the population is increasingly concerned about possible violence by the LRA. So-called “Arrow Boys” have been set up as self-defense militias, armed only, however, with bows and arrows.”
Bishop Julian Andavo Mbia of Isiro-Niangara, Equatoria province, in north-east DRC, tells Fides that in his region, “the alarm is issued in the face of possible attacks by the LRA as a form of prevention. At the moment we have no concrete evidence of actual attacks by the Ugandan guerrillas in our diocese.” At Christmas time in 2008, in a series of attacks in some villages in the province of Equatoria, LRA guerrillas killed about 900 people and abducted another 700.
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