Rebels kill aid worker in Sudan

A British aid worker has been ambushed and fatally shot by Ugandan rebels in southern Sudan, officials said today.

The attack was the second time the Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army rebels have targeted aid workers in their 19-year insurgency in northern Uganda that they fight from rear bases in neighbouring Sudan.

On October 26, the rebels made their first ever attack on aid workers in northern Uganda.

Collin Lee, 57, and his wife were travelling from Uganda to the southern Sudanese town of Yei on Saturday when their vehicle was ambushed by the rebels, said Andreas Zetterlund, spokesman for the International Aid Services agency for which Lee worked.

Lee’s wife, who is pregnant, was uninjured in the attack, Zetterlund said from the agency’s headquarters in Stockholm, Sweden.

Lt Chris Magezi, a spokesman for the Ugandan military, said that she was recuperating in a hospital in north-western Uganda.

Magezi, who was speaking from Gulu, the main northern Uganda town, said that Ugandan soldiers and troops from the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, in control of large areas of southern Sudan, rescued the aid workers and their driver yesterday.

“The rebels burnt down their Toyota Land Cruiser before taking out valuables including money and a very high frequency (VHF) radio,” Magezi said.

The 20 or so rebels fled in the direction of Congo, “and we did not capture them. We put a lot of pressure on them and they simply abandoned their captives. The captives were not wounded during the rescue,” said Magezi.

In October, at least two aid agencies indefinitely suspended their work in northern Uganda after Lord's Resistance Army rebels killed two aid workers in two separate ambushes.

The Lord’s Resistance Army is made up of the remnants of a northern rebellion that began after Museveni, a southerner, took power in 1986.

They operate from bases in the south of Sudan, which had backed the rebels but is now reconciled with Uganda.

Some rebels fled to eastern Congo in September following pressure from Ugandan troops who have been permitted by Sudanese authorities to pursue them to their rear bases.