Driver escapes through gunfire as passengers are robbed

By Samuel Balagadde  

Despite a hail of bullets being sprayed at a Uganda-bound bus during an ambush in South Sudan, the driver and conductor miraculously escaped uninjured.

Godfrey Kityo, driver of Friendship  bus, registration number UAM 213N, only had his safety belt and lower part of  his trousers grazed by the hail of bullets, miraculously surviving without any injuries.

However, the passenger in the co-driver's seat was not as fortunate, as the  first shot caught her in the chest.

She collapsed on the gearlever and initially, "I thought she had (taken cover) but later I discovered she had died," narrated Kityo.

With the dead passenger slumped on the gearlever, Kityo could not engage gears and had to call for passengers to help remove her. Meantime the gunmen sustained gunfire as a hail of bullets tore through the windows.

The brave Kityo, a resident of Lungujja, Rubaga Division, managed to drive the bus to Kampala after replacing tyres somewhere along the way.

One of his staff however identfied only as Faisal sustained inujries. The conductor, Moses Yetamwami, also escaped  unhurt.

The heart-stopping incident happened Firday morning at 6:30am when gunmen ambushed the bus at Army Junction, about 90 Kilometers from Juba.

The number of gunmen could not be established.

The front tyres had been shot at and flattened and the bus only made another 600 meters before it got stuck and passenger were robbed of property.  

Willy Katende, the General Secretary Uganda Bus Drivers and Allied  Association, said the  safety  of passengers and buses plying the Juba  route is not  guaranteed especially after the withdrawal of UPDF from the war ravaged country.