The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
Moroto, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | Eight Karimojong cattle rustlers were killed last week by the joint security forces involving the army and police in the ongoing disarmament operations in the Karamoja region.
The Karamoja Regional Police spokesperson Michael Longole disclosed this on Monday during the weekly press briefing on the joint operations against cattle rustling. According to Longole, the 8 were killed in a fire exchange between the rustlers and the joint security forces. He noted that the rustlers also killed two civilians while rustling.
According to Longole, the security forces also managed to track and recover 198 heads of cattle and 44 goats, adding that they have since been handed over to their owners. He said security personnel were still in the field tracking the remaining 152 heads of cattle and 25 goats raided by the rustlers. “Cattle rustling is still going on but we are giving the rustlers hard time,” he said.
Longole said that there are enough security forces on the ground to deal with hardcore rustlers. Samson Lomuria, one of the concerned residents of Pupu village in Rupa sub-county, Moroto district projected that by the time cattle rustling scales down, the number of youth in Karamoja would have come down.
“Right now the number of elders in Karamoja is higher than the number of youth because the youths are getting finished, they are being killed every day over cattle rustling, “he said. Grace Angolere, a Village Health Team member of Kacheri sub-county in Kotido district says that whenever they go for health outreach programs, they only get a wife and children living alone because several men have since been killed in the bush.
“I reached to one of the families whereby a woman had never seen her husband now one year after he went for a raid. So she does not know whether he’s alive or dead,” she said.
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