From the ALL cultures are EQUAL files

Uganda
Rebels attack, hack women
From correspondents in Gulu
March 21, 2005

Daily Telegraph
UGANDAN rebels have attacked a group of women collecting firewood in a remote village near the Sudanese border, hacking off their lips, ears and breasts, a government official said today.
Fighters from the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) have stepped up attacks on civilians and troops after the most significant peace talks for a decade stalled late last year.

"In Kitgum district yesterday the rebels caught seven women and cut off their breasts and lips," Colonel Walter Ochora, chairman of Gulu district, the epicentre of the 19-year conflict, said.
The number of injuries was not immediately clear, with one newspaper saying three women had been mutilated with several others abducted in the attack in Agoro sub-county, about 20km north of Kitgum town.

The state-owned New Vision newspaper reported one of the youngest rebels, aged about 16, had cut off the victims' lips.

Leaders in northern Uganda say the cult-like LRA has conducted hundreds of similar attacks during its campaign, saying the rebels conduct the mutilations to terrorise the population.
Col. Ochora, the top government official in Gulu, warned of the threat of more attacks, saying LRA deputy commander Vincent Otti had crossed into Uganda from hideouts in southern Sudan yesterday with 300 fighters.
"They are well armed," he said.

"Over the next two weeks you will see what they are going to do, the atrocities they will commit. The rebels want to make a point through a soft target, through the population."
Col. Ochora was welcoming Tony Hall, the US ambassador to the UN agencies in Rome, who was on a one-day trip to assess the humanitarian situation in a region where 1.6 million people have been forced from their homes.

He announced an extra $27 million in US support for the UN World Food Program operations in northern Uganda.

Col. Ochora said Uganda's army had been lax in not stopping the rebels moving large distances on foot before they attacked civilians.
Dozens of people were kidnapped by the LRA last week, according to local officials, but the army disputes the figures.
Reuters