Survivors Tell Their Story

By Sebidde Kiryowa THE killers of Jimmy Sekasi, the director of a Kampala Catering Institute and 11 of his students at Pakuba on Tuesday, wore uniforms similar to Park rangers, survivors said yesterday. Willy Okello and Johnson Lalonyo, two of the eight survivors who had earlier been feared dead, arrived in Kampala after spending a night in Masindi Hotel. Okello told The New Vision, "It was about 9:00a.m, we were driving towards Pakuba. Mr. Sekasi was driving. Suddenly, we saw some rough people running towards our omni-bus. They wore green army uniforms. At first, we mistook them for Game Rangers and we asked our tour guide if he knew them but he said he was not sure. "They (attackers) were wild and shouting but we did not hear what they said. Suddenly, our tour guide shouted, 'these are not rangers. They are rebels!' "The men started shooting. They aimed at us. The omni-bus stopped and we jumped out. Mr Sekasi implored us not to leave the bus but we were already off and running. I looked back and saw the tour guide fall. He was bleeding. He had been shot. The bullets were rampant, they hit the ground and stirred a cloud of dust in front of us. We ran off madly and the men ran after us. They chased us for about five miles while shooting at us." Lalonyo, occasionally breaking into sobs, said the attackers shot at them from the top of hills when they were in the valley and from the valleys when they were on top of the hills. He said, "All the shooting stirred up a commotion among the animals which started running helter skelter while the bigger animals like buffalo and elephants charged at us. We had to take shelter behind trees." He said when the rebels abandoned the chase, they were out of breath when, "Suddenly we heard the roaring water. It was the Murchison Falls. We knew we were not far from Paraa headquarters. Then we saw smoke. It was a UPDF detach. We went straight over there and reported what had happened. It was about 10:45a.m. The headquarters was about 2km away. After communication, Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) officials picked us up and took us back to Paraa. "We were told by UPDF officers that those confirmed dead were eight and taken to identify the bodies which had been removed from the scene of ambush by now," Lalonyo said. Ends