2023-06-18 03:01:00
At least 41 people, mostly students, were killed in an attack by a group linked to the Islamic State jihadist organization on a secondary school late Friday in western Uganda, near the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the Kasese district.
The command “set fire to a bedroom and looted a food store” at the establishment, said Ugandan police spokesman Fred Enanga, who blamed the “terrorist attack” on the ADF (Democratic Allied Forces) militia that has its stronghold in the east of Congo.
Eight people were rescued alive, although “in a critical situation” at the Bwera local hospital. Officials and witnesses specified that weapons and knives were used during the attack. Sylvester Mapozi, Mayor of Mpondwe Lhubiriha Town Hall had reported the death of 39 students inside the college. “When fleeing, the attackers also murdered two people, a woman and a man. This brings the number to 41,” he said.
The rebels fled to Virunga National Park on the border with Uganda and Rwanda, a wildlife sanctuary with mountain gorillas. The militias, many of which are active in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, use the park as a hideout. “Those responsible for this appalling act must be brought to justice,” UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said.
locked up
General Dick Olum indicated that, according to the information gathered, the militiamen had been in the area for at least two days. According to him, the attackers had detailed information regarding the high school. “They knew where the boys’ and girls’ dormitories were,” Olum said.
“The rebels locked the boys’ dormitory and set it on fire. The girls’ section was not locked, so they were able to run away, but when they did they were attacked with machetes and shot at,” the military explained. According to the officer, some bodies are so charred that DNA tests will be needed to identify them. In addition, the rebels kidnapped at least six people. General Olum specified that he has requested reinforcements and planes to rescue the hostages and locate the hiding places.
Mumbere Edgar is a student who survived the massacre and stated that the attackers went to his room with machetes and pistols and started shooting at them from outside the window: they all hid under the bed. So they set everything on fire to burn them alive.
millionaire reward
The ADF began as an insurgent group in largely Muslim Uganda and settled in eastern Congo in the mid-1990s. Since then it has been accused of killing thousands of civilians.
In 2019 they swore allegiance to the Islamic State group, which considers ADF fighters its branch in Central Africa. They are accused of attacks in the Congo and on Ugandan soil. This weekend is not the first attack on a school in Uganda attributed to the ADF.
In June 1998, some 80 students were burned alive in their dormitories during an ADF attack on the Kichwamba Technical Institute, where more than 100 students were kidnapped.
Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo launched a joint offensive in 2021 to drive the ADF out of their Congolese strongholds, but so far those operations have not stopped the attacks. The US announced in early March a reward of up to $5 million for information that might lead to the arrest of its leader, a 40-year-old Ugandan named Musa Baluku.
This border area has a heavy military presence and one of the questions is how they managed to carry out such a deadly attack coming from the nearby border with the Congo. It was learned that they had spent two days in the surroundings planning the action and one of them came to the school the day before to study the conditions. As a result of previous intelligence, the first thing they did was lock up the male students to avoid any fight –in fact they tried to resist- and then they went to massacre the girls.
The ADF is heavily persecuted by the military and always ends up divided into small groups so as not to attract attention. This weakens them. So, to show that they are alive and have damage power, they do these types of attacks on easy targets. In 1998, 80 students in Kichwamba had already been burned alive in their rooms, kidnapping a hundred. They seek as many dead as possible to demonstrate their power. In March this year they attacked the town of Mukondi killing 36 and the following month they killed 20 people.
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