Christmas massacre leaves 400 dead


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NAIROBI // Ugandan rebels have killed more than 400 people in northeastern Congo since Christmas, an aid agency said today. The Catholic charity, Caritas, cited reports by its staff in the region. "Caritas is shocked by its staff reports of a series of massacres in the Democratic Republic of Congo carried out by Ugandan rebels on Christmas Day and the days following," the group said in a statement on its website.

The Lord's Resistance Army rebel group and the Ugandan government have accused each other of being behind recent attacks in the remote area, where the rebels have bases. Telephone calls by the Associated Press to the army and rebels were not returned today. But Patrick Nicholson, a spokesman for the Catholic charity, said the staff identified the rebels by their deadlocked hair and their Acholi language.

"There was no question in the staffs' minds that it was the LRA," he told the AP in a telephone interview. The allegations are the latest reports of attacks in the area near where the armies of Uganda, Sudan and Congo began an offensive this month to root out the Lord's Resistance Army. Yesterday, officials and witnesses said attackers had hacked to death scores of people who sought refuge at a Catholic church the day after Christmas, and the United Nations said the rebels had killed a total of 189 people in three villages in the area over two recent days.

The Lord's Resistance Army has waged one of Africa's longest and most brutal wars for the last two decades. In the past, aid and rights groups have accused the rebels of cutting off the lips of civilians and forcing thousands of children to serve as soldiers or sex slaves. The conflict has spilt out of northern Uganda and into Sudan and Congo. Congo suffered back-to-back civil wars from 1996 to 2002 that drew in neighbouring countries in what became a rush to plunder Congo's massive mineral wealth.

Currently, long-running peace talks between the Lord's Resistance Army and the Ugandan government have stalled. Rebel leaders have sought guarantees they will not be arrested under international warrants. The rebels' elusive leader, Joseph Kony, and other top members are wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for war crimes and crimes against humanity. * AP

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The bairaq is a competition for the best herd of 50 camels, named for the banner its winner takes home

Namoos - a word of congratulations reserved for falconry competitions, camel races and camel pageants. It best translates as 'the pride of victory' - and for competitors, it is priceless

Asayel camels - sleek, short-haired hound-like racers

Majahim - chocolate-brown camels that can grow to weigh two tonnes. They were only valued for milk until camel pageantry took off in the 1990s

Millions Street - the thoroughfare where camels are led and where white 4x4s throng throughout the festival

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Countdown to Zero exhibition will show how disease can be beaten

Countdown to Zero: Defeating Disease, an international multimedia exhibition created by the American Museum of National History in collaboration with The Carter Center, will open in Abu Dhabi a  month before Reaching the Last Mile.

Opening on October 15 and running until November 15, the free exhibition opens at The Galleria mall on Al Maryah Island, and has already been seen at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum in Atlanta, the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

 

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Conflict, drought, famine

Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.

Band Aid

Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.

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Sole survivors
  • Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
  • George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
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What can victims do?

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Courtesy: Crystal Intelligence