2023-06-18 03:11:30
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 in western Uganda, near the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
The commando “set fire to a dormitory and looted a food store” at the school, mixed and privately run, said Ugandan police spokesman Fred Enanga, who blamed the “terrorist attack” on the ADF militia (Allied Forces). Democráticas), which has its stronghold in the east of the DRC.
Eight people were rescued alive, although they are “in a critical situation” at Bwera hospital. Officials and witnesses specified that weapons and knives were used during the attack.
Sylvester Mapozi, the mayor of Mpondwe Lhubiriha town hall, where the attack took place, had previously reported the deaths of 39 students inside the college. “While fleeing, the attackers also killed two people, a woman and a man. This brings the number to 41,” he specified.
One survivor described attackers carrying firearms and machetes firing into the bedroom following opening fire through the windows.
The rebels fled to Virunga, on the border with Uganda and Rwanda, a world-renowned sanctuary for rare species, including mountain gorillas. A Ugandan military statement said six students were taken to carry food looted from the school store.
Militias, dozens of which are active in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, also use the park as a hideout.
General Dick Olum indicated that, according to the information gathered, the militiamen had been in the area for at least two days. 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. They didn’t close the girls’ section, so they were able to run away, but when they did, some were attacked with machetes and others were shot,” the soldier explained.
According to him, some of the bodies are so charred that DNA tests will be needed to identify them.
General Olum specified that they have requested reinforcements and planes to rescue the hostages and locate the rebel hideouts.
Reward. The ADF militia began as an insurgent group in largely Muslim Uganda and settled in eastern DRC 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 presents ADF fighters as a local branch in Central Africa. They are accused of jihadist attacks in the DRC and on Ugandan soil.
This weekend is not the first attack on a school in Uganda attributed to the ADF. In June 1998, eighty students were burned alive in their dormitories during an ADF attack on the Kichwamba Technical Institute near the DRC border. More than a hundred students were kidnapped.
Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo launched a joint offensive in 2021 to drive the ADF out of their Congolese strongholds, but so far, those operations have failed to stop the group’s attacks.
The United States announced in early March a reward of up to five million dollars for any information that might lead to the arrest of its leader, a Ugandan man in his 40s named Musa Baluku.
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