Ugandan school strike leaves at least 25 dead
At least 25 people were killed and eight others injured when militants with an extremist group attacked a secondary school in western Uganda, authorities said Saturday, in one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in the East African nation in years.
The armed group, known as the Allied Democratic Forces, attacked a school in Mpondwe, a town close to the border with the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo, on Friday night, a police spokesman, Fred Enanga, said. said in a post on Twitter. During the attack, a dormitory was set on fire and food in a store was looted, he said. At least eight people were in critical condition and had been hospitalized, Mr. Enang to it.
Ugandan officials said the army and police pursued the militants who attacked the school Virunga National Park, a dense forest that is home to endangered mountain gorillas. A military spokesman said on Twitter that they were also working to free those who had been kidnapped. It was not immediately clear how many people the militants had kidnapped.
The attack is the worst the group has carried out in Uganda since late 2021, when suicide bombers took off coordinated explosions in the capital Kampala, which killed three people, sparked fear about the group’s reach and presented a nasty challenge to Ugandan authorities. Since then, the Ugandan government has been working with the Congolese government launched an offensive against the Allied Democratic Forces, or ADF, with the aim of driving the group from its bases in eastern Congo.
The two governments have given few details about the military campaign, saying only that air and artillery strikes have weakened the group. But regional observers continued to doubt the success of the operation, codenamed Shujaa, or “Bravery”, saying the ADF continued to wreak havoc in eastern Congo, a lush, mineral-rich region home to more than 100 rebel groups. have overseen a wave of carnage and widespread devastation for decades.
Experts also say that the President of Uganda, Yoweri Museveniwho has been in power for nearly four decades, used the operation to bolster and secure his image oil fields dug near the border with Congo.
The ADF was founded in 1995 in eastern Congo by two groups opposed to Mr Museveni, one of them an Islamic sect. The group also received regional support from leaders in other countries, including Sudan and Congo, who sought to undermine Museveni’s rule.
In 1998, rebels joined the group attacked a college in western Uganda, killing 80 students and kidnapping 100 others.
But as of 2011, major offensives by the Ugandans, Congolese and United Nations peacekeepers undermined the group, causing it to retreat deeper into the mountainous Ruwenzori region bordering Uganda and Congo.
The group’s former leader, Jamil Mukulu, was also captured in Tanzania in 2015 and subsequently extradited to Uganda.
Nevertheless, the ADF has continued to carry out even more vicious and daring attacks. In recent years it has recruited new members, including children; peacekeepers attacked; jailbreaks performed; and involved in sexual violence, according to the United Nations.
It also pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, which in 2019 claimed his first attack in Congo. In 2021 the United States assigned the ADF a terrorist organization and offered a reward up to $5 million for information on the group’s new leader, Seka Musa Baluku.
But while there are some financial connections and ideological similarities between the two entities, regional observers and UN experts saying there is no “convincing evidence” that the Islamic State directs or controls ADF operations.