Another ambulance stolen from Arua, sold to DRC

Police have started investigating circumstances under which two vehicles including an ambulance were stolen from Arua and later sold to neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo where they were later recovered.

According to Police spokesperson, Fred Enanga, the incident happened last week when unknown thugs broke into United Nations High Commission for Refugeess(UNHCR) offices in Arua  and stole two high value land cruisers including double cabin pick up registration number UBE 496B and UBK 403N that had been remodeled into an ambulance.

“The facts gathered indicate that a group of thugs in connivance with the guards broke into UNHCR offices along Yumbe road. They went to the CCTV centre and vandalized cameras and removed footages to kill evidence against them. They vandalized a third motor vehicle they found in the parking,”Enanga said.

He explained that security tracked down the vehicles and it was established they had been sold to the North Eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo and an alert was sent to their Police which saw the two vehicles impounded and are currently being kept at Aruu police station in DRC.

Enanga said that police have intensified the hunt for two Saracen security guards who had been deployed at the UNHCR offices who after the incident abandoned their guns and disappeared from the scene.

This is yet another incident in which an ambulance has been stolen and later sold to DRC.

In March, a Ministry of Health ambulance, a Toyota Land Cruiser registration number UG6812M  was stolen from the Arua regional referral hospital parking yard.

Later, five people including a Dental Assistant, a security guard at the hospital, a driver of the Hospital, a driver attached to the Office of the Prime Minister and another person were arrested and on interrogation, they confessed to selling the ambulance to DRC .

According to the police spokesperson, such high value vehicles, mostly land cruisers are on high demand in the North Eastern part of DRC which borders Uganda.

“The proximity of West Nile to DRC and the strong demand for four wheel drive vehicles along that axis is a contributing factor to this trend,”Enanga said.

He however noted that whereas many of these cars are stolen from Uganda and end up in DRC, the process of returning them is very difficult.

“Each year, cars are stolen and driven to North Eastern DRC where they generally remain because the process of recovering them is usually very expensive since the innocent buyers on the other side always make their plea to authorities that they bought the vehicles and therefore ask for compensation. It makes it difficult to instantly get these vehicles back to Uganda,”Enanga said.