At least 41 killed in rebel attack on Ugandan school near Congo border
The victims included the students, a security guard and two members of the local community who were killed outside the school.
KAMPALA: Ugandan authorities have recovered the bodies of 41 people, including 38 students, after an attack by suspected rebels at a secondary school near the Congo border, the local mayor said on Saturday.
The victims included the students, a security guard and two members of the local community who were killed outside the school, Mpondwe-Lhubiriha Mayor Selevest Mapoze told The Associated Press. An unknown number of people were abducted by the rebels, who fled across the porous border into Congo after Friday night’s raid.
Mapoze said while some students suffered fatal burns when the rebels set fire to a dormitory, others were shot or hacked with machetes.
Police said rebels from the Allied Democratic Forces, which have been carrying out attacks for years from their bases in volatile eastern Congo, have raided Lhubiriha Secondary School in the border town of Mpondwe.
The school, mixed and privately owned, is located in the Ugandan district of Kasese, about 2 kilometers from the Congo border.
“A dormitory was set on fire and a food store was looted. So far, 25 bodies have been recovered from the school and transferred to Bwera Hospital,” the police said in a statement, adding that eight others were in critical condition.
Police said Ugandan troops followed the attackers into Congo’s Virunga National Park. The army confirmed in a statement that Ugandan troops in Congo are “pursuing the enemy to rescue the abductees”.
Joe Walusimbi, an official representing Uganda’s president in Kasese, told The Associated Press over the phone that some of the victims were “burned beyond recognition.”
Winnie Kiiza, an influential political leader and former legislator from the region, condemned the “cowardly attack” on Twitter. She said that “attacks on schools are unacceptable and a serious violation of children’s rights”, adding that schools should always be “a safe place for every student”.
The ADF has been accused of carrying out numerous attacks on civilians in remote parts of eastern Congo in recent years.
The ADF has long opposed the rule of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, a US security ally who has been in power since 1986.
The group was founded in the early 1990s by some Ugandan Muslims, who said they had been sidelined by Museveni’s policies. At the time, the rebels carried out deadly attacks in Ugandan villages and in the capital, including a 1998 attack that massacred 80 students in a town that was not from the site of the last attack.
A Ugandan military strike later forced the ADF into eastern Congo, where many rebel groups can operate because the central government has limited control there.
The group has since had ties to the Islamic State terror group.
At least 19 people were killed in Congo in March by suspected ADF extremists.
Ugandan authorities have vowed for years to hunt down ADF militants, even outside Ugandan territory. In 2021, Uganda launched joint air and artillery strikes in Congo against the group.