Two U.S. Missionaries and One Student shot dead In Uganda College

Unidentified gunmen raided and looted a college and killed two American missionaries and a Ugandan student near Yumbe in north-western Uganda, police said last Friday.

Warren Pett and his wife, Donna, were shot late Thursday after seven armed men wearing military uniforms at the college, where they taught. They were agricultural experts at the Esther Evangelistical School of Technology, which is run by Here is Life, a Ugandan Christian group. A Ugandan student also was killed in the raid.

William Stough, an official with the African Inland Mission, an international interdenominational Christian missionary group said that "They had a deep concern for the people and peoples' lives?

A 17-year insurgency has wreaked havoc across northern and northeastern Uganda, but the area around Yumbe, 300 miles northwest of the capital Kampala, has been not been affected by the rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army and has been relatively peaceful.
"We are on the ground investigating the case and no arrests have been made at the moment," Araa said by telephone. "I can't tell you the motive of the attackers since this area has been very peaceful with no incidents of rebel activities."

The attackers looted the college and destroyed huts where college staff lived, he added.

On Feb. 21, the Lord's Resistance Army slaughtered more than 200 civilians living in a refugee camp in the northern district of Lira in one of the worst attacks in recent years.

Other parts of the country have been relatively stable since President Yoweri Museveni seized power in 1986 after leading a five-year bush war.