"They are traumatized and some are in bad health. They went thorugh a terrible ordeal but they are with us now and we will try to help them find hope again". Thus spoke to MISNA father Romano Segalini, a Comboni missionary in Watsa, near the Ugandan border. Authorities handed him 22 children whom the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) had kidnapped in recent months. A small LRA group surrendered to the military last night relinquishing the children. Father Segalini said that 12 rebels surrendered in Lukuku, near the Durba mining area, freeing 22 children, boys and girls. The missionary manages an aid centre for youth in the dioceses of Dondi. He said the youngest of those released are about 10-11 years old, mostly coming from nearby areas except one Sudanese girl, whose parents are refugees left homeless after an LRA raid. Father Segalini alleged that "while the surprise was great, the joy was greater still" adding that most of these children have been forced to live in the forest for the past year or even slightly longer. "Some have wounds and they showed us the scars resulting from the violence, while the girls were all raped," said the missionary. "But now we will try to treat their wounds and overcome the trauma. It will be a long process, but we are hoping to make it". The missionaries have already activated their network of contacts and they hope to get into contact with their families, to be able to return them to their families, if they so wish". The LRA are still roaming around after engaging in very time wasting so-called peace talks which never produced any effect even after two years of 'talks' in South Sudan. An unsuccessful and long overdue military campaign by the armies of the DR Congo, Uganda and South Sudan failed to defeat the LRA, which has now spread to various parts of these same countries and the Central African Republic. The LRA continues seemingly unchallenged to harass and terrorize in rural areas, kidnapping and killing in the process without any apparent goal other than to destroy. It is an especially violent element of an already dysfunctional area affected by a number of pointless conflicts. A few months ago, the Ugandan government asked and obtained permission from neighboring countries to cross borders such as to launch another offensive in hopes of annihilating this nuisance that is the LRA. [AB]
