Children seek refuge from rebel kidnappers

THOUSANDS of frightened children are spending the night outdoors in a northern Ugandan town to avoid being grabbed

Most of the children walk seven miles from their rural homes to Gulu every evening at dusk, then wrap themselves in plastic bags and sleep in the open before returning home the next day, said Father Carlos Rodriguez, a Spanish missionary.

The number of children arriving in Gulu has risen in recent weeks because of an increase in attacks by the Lord’s Resistance Army, or LRA, a shadowy rebel group that has abducted up to 20,000 children to use as child soldiers, sex slaves and labourers.

“I slept in the parking lot of the bus station with these children. They wrap themselves up in plastic bags, and it would not be an exaggeration if I said that the number was over 1,000,” Fr Rodriguez said in Gulu, 224 miles north of Kampala.

“At around 6:30 am, they leave for their homes to pick up books and go to school and sit for the national exams like other children in the country,” Rodriguez said.

John Baptist Odama, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Gulu, estimated that every night, as many as 20,000 children come into Gulu to sleep.

The LRA rebellion has ravaged northern Uganda, killing thousands and forcing 800,000 people to flee their homes. Fighting in the region intensified since March 2002 when the Ugandan army launched Operation Iron Fist in a bid to crush the rebels.