SOROTI, Uganda, June 25 (UPI) -- Uganda's child soldiers awoke and abducted more than 100 Catholic schoolgirls at gunpoint, a newspaper reported Wednesday.
The girls were taken by the child soldiers of the Lord's Resistance Army Tuesday near the town of Soroti, the latest in a series of attacks in Uganda's increasingly brutal civil war.
Government troops initially said they were tracking the abducted girls by helicopter but by evening admitted they had lost the trail, the Canadian newspaper Globe and Mail reported.
Forty-four young students were kidnapped a month ago from the seminary in Lacor where priests have struggled to act as intermediaries between rebels and the government. At least 150,000 people have been displaced in Lira in the past month, said Tom Omach, an aid worker.
Many people say the army is not really trying to crush the rebels because senior military figures are enriching themselves on military contracts.