From Wall Street Journal

Ugandan authorities have discovered three mass graves, containing remains of victims of recent clashes over land rights in the oil-rich Lake Albertine Rift basin, threatening to escalate simmering tribal tensions in the region.

Speaking to The Wall Street Journal, police spokesman Fred Enanga said on Tuesday that police investigators are preparing to start exhuming the mass graves discovered in Bundibugyo district, along Uganda’s western border with Congo.

Local Bundibugyo district officials estimate that 10 to 12 people were secretly buried in each of the mass graves shortly after tribal uprisings over land rights in the three border districts of Kasese, Bundibugyo and Ntoroko.

The tribal uprisings have stoked ethnic tensions in a region where international oil companies are in the process of developing vast oil fields, believed to contain as much as 3.5 billion barrels of crude.

The identities of the victims aren’t known. “Our forensic team is already on the ground, the first step is to identify the victims…Whoever is responsible will be brought to book,” Mr. Enanga said.

Local residents alleged that the victims were killed in reprisal attacks by rival tribes, in the aftermath of the July 5 tribal uprisings in the three districts in which nearly 100 people were killed by security forces.

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