UNITED NATIONS
Department of Humanitarian Affairs
Integrated Regional Information Network
for the Great Lakes
Tel: +254 2 622147
Fax: +254 2 622129
e-mail: irin@dha.unon.org

IRIN Emergency Update No. 217 on the Great Lakes (Thursday 24 July 1997)

- In a press release today, Ugandan rebel group, the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) offered the release of 24 schoolgirls held since October last year in exchange for a ceasefire. The Ugandan government has rejected any conditions attached to the release of the girls, who the

reported by Simon Peter Esaku
WV Uganda Communications officer
"The rebels are slaughtering, shooting, mutilating, and burning civilians in houses,"
reported Bundibugyo Area Development Program Manager Alex Wananda, adding that some of
the bodies found had been decapitated. He spoke from the city of Fort Portal in nearby Kabarole
district, where he and his staff had fled to on 16 June when remote Bundibugyo town was
attacked.

As government troops continue to battle insurgents of the Allied Democratic Forces in

UNICEF today reiterated its deep concern over the continuing plight of thousands of children abducted by the rebel forces of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in northern Uganda.

The rebels have kidnapped an estimated 5,000 to 8,000 children from Gulu and Kitgum and other neighbouring districts in northern Uganda over the past two years (although no precise figures are yet available). Most of them are between 12 and 16 and are trained as fighters,