Rebels with ties to Islamic State have been accused of killing dozens of pupils in an attack on a secondary school near Uganda’s border with the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Ugandan authorities blamed the atrocity on five members of the Allied Democratic Forces, or ADF, an Islamic extremist group that operates from parts of Ituri and North Kivu in the DRC, terrorising locals and sometimes crossing into Uganda. The US has labelled the ADF an affiliate of Islamic State.
“The school was found burning with dead bodies of students lying in the compound,” the office of Uganda’s defence spokesperson said on Saturday.
The Ugandan armed forces said that “a group of ADF terrorists” attacked a private secondary school near the porous border with the DRC at 11.30pm on Friday, killing 37 people, injuring eight and abducting six.
Citing local authorities, Ugandan journalists reported that the number of casualties had risen to 41, most of them students.
One of the survivors, Mumbere Bright, told Uganda’s New Vision newspaper that the assailants broke into the dormitory in the town of Mpondwe during a blackout.
“The rebels asked for Muslims amongst the students but there were none,” she said.
“The rebels said they don’t kill fellow believers. They slaughtered every student in their sight using their pangas, axes and sharp objects.”
Ugandan police said troops were engaged in a “hot pursuit” of the attackers to rescue the kidnapped students. They said the rebels were heading towards Virunga National Park, which is just across the border in the DRC.
The ADF originated in Uganda in the 1990s and opposes President Yoweri Museveni’s rule. Museveni, who has been in power since 1986, had deployed troops in eastern DRC to fight ADF.
In November 2021, Ugandan officials blamed ADF for twin blasts in the capital, Kampala, that killed three people. In 1998, not far from the latest attack, the ADF massacred up to 80 students at another school.
Uganda has also sent troops to Somalia to fight al-Shabaab militants linked to al-Qaeda. This month, Museveni said 54 Ugandan soldiers were killed in an attack by al-Shaabab on a base housing African Union peacekeepers in Somalia.
During the 2010 football World Cup, al-Shabaab bombed several bars in Kampala, killing more than 70 people.
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