# Lightning strike kills 14 at refugee camp church in northern Uganda
*Event date: 2024-11-02*
Fourteen people were killed and 34 others injured when lightning struck a prayer service in a refugee settlement in northern Uganda, police said, in a tragedy that hit the Palabek camp in Lamwo district during the country’s wet season. The victims had gathered in a makeshift metallic structure when the strike occurred.
Police spokesman Kituuma Rusoke said the incident happened on Saturday in the remote district of Lamwo. He said the dead had not yet been identified. The AP report says the residents were attending a prayer service at the time of the strike, and that there was no report of a fire breaking out afterward.
The Palabek settlement primarily houses refugees from South Sudan, making the loss particularly painful for a community already living far from home. AP reported that friends and family were mourning the dead, who were buried on Sunday after the strike. The scene described by the report suggests a tightly packed worship setting that offered little protection when the storm hit.
Lightning deaths are not unusual in Uganda during rainy periods, but incidents on this scale are rare and devastating. The AP report notes that deadly lightning is commonly reported in the country during the wet seasons, underscoring how weather remains a serious hazard in some communities even outside the more widely reported risks of conflict or disease.
The strike also shows how vulnerable refugee communities can be to sudden environmental dangers. Palabek is a remote settlement, and a strike on a church or prayer space can have especially severe consequences when people are gathered closely together under a metal roof or structure.
Local authorities moved quickly to account for the dead and injured, but the report gives no indication of a longer-term recovery plan or changes to the site. In the immediate aftermath, the priority would have been treating the wounded and identifying the victims.
The AP account does not suggest foul play or an unusual weather event beyond the lightning strike itself. That matters because it frames the tragedy as a natural disaster with extraordinary consequences rather than part of a broader security incident.
For the settlement, the death toll is a reminder that daily life can be interrupted by sudden, unavoidable hazards. The fact that 34 people were injured indicates the strike hit a crowded gathering and caused serious trauma even among survivors.
The losses in Lamwo will likely resonate well beyond the camp because they combine several vulnerabilities at once: displacement, crowded shelter, a religious gathering and seasonal storms. What began as a prayer service ended as one of the deadliest lightning incidents reported in Uganda in recent years.
The authorities’ early accounting leaves little uncertainty about the scale of the event. Fourteen dead, 34 injured, and a refugee community in mourning after a storm turned a worship meeting into a mass casualty incident.
