At least 41 people, mostly students, were killed in an overnight Friday-Saturday raid by jihadists on a high school in western Uganda, the country’s worst such attack in years .
According to army and police officials, the attackers are members of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), an Islamist militia that has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group.
After the bloody attack on this high school located in the district of Kasese, near the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo, they fled to Virunga National Park, in Congolese territory, taking six kidnapped people.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres “strongly” condemned the attack and called for the immediate release” of those abducted.
France for its part condemned “with the greatest firmness the abominable attack” against this school, and the office of African Affairs of the American State Department said it was “dismayed”.
Thirty-nine students were killed in Lhubiriha high school, said Sylvester Mapozi, the mayor of the locality of Mpondwe-Lhubiriha, where the attack occurred.
They also “killed two people, a man and a woman, bringing the death toll to 41”, he added.
According to the mayor, many of the victims were burned beyond recognition while other students were still missing.
Mumbere Edgar Dido, 16, said the attackers burst into his dormitory with machetes and firearms and fired from outside, throwing the students under their beds.
“They kept shooting from the windows, then set fire to our room while we were inside, before going to the girls’ dormitory,” he said.
It is the deadliest attack in Uganda since the double bombing in Kampala in 2010 which killed 76 people in a raid claimed by the Islamist group Shebab based in Somalia.
According to a police report consulted by AFP, police and military units were alerted to a “big attack” at Lhubiriha high school in Mpondwe around 11 p.m. (2000 GMT) on Friday evening.
Upon arrival, they found “the school burning and corpses of students lying in the grounds”, according to the report.
The school is less than two kilometers from the border with DR Congo, where the ADF has been accused of killing thousands of civilians since the 1990s.
Major General Dick Olum told AFP that intelligence services reported an ADF presence in the area at least two days before the attack, underscoring the need for an investigation.
According to this officer, the attackers had detailed information about the school.
“They knew where the boys’ and girls’ dormitories were,” said Olum from Mpondwe. “That’s why the rebels locked the boys’ dormitory and set it on fire. The rebels didn’t lock the girls’ section and the girls managed to get out, but they were beaten with machetes while they were running for cover, and others were shot.”
“We requested more firepower, aircraft to assist in the rescue of abductees and to locate rebel hideouts for military action,” he said.
The attackers fled to Virunga National Park, a vast expanse on the border with Uganda and Rwanda, taking with them six kidnapped people, Uganda People’s Defense Force (UPDF) spokesman Felix said. Kulayigye.
The Virunga are the oldest nature reserve in Africa and are a sanctuary for rare species, including mountain gorillas.
But militias – dozens of which are active in the mineral-rich eastern DR Congo – also use the park as a hideout.
Originally mainly Muslim Ugandan rebels, ADF militiamen have been rooting since the mid-1990s in eastern DRC, where they are accused of having massacred thousands of civilians.
They pledged allegiance in 2019 to the Islamic State group, which presents them as its branch in Central Africa, and are also accused of jihadist attacks on Ugandan soil.
Uganda and DR Congo launched a joint offensive in 2021 to drive the ADF out of their Congolese strongholds, but these operations have so far failed to end the group’s attacks.
The United States announced in early March that it was offering a reward of up to $5 million for any information that could lead to its leader, a Ugandan in his 40s named Musa Baluku.
This is not the first attack on a school in Uganda attributed to the ADF.
In June 1998, 80 students were burned to death in their dormitories in an ADF attack on the Kichwamba Technical Institute near the DR Congo border. Over 100 students had been abducted.
17/06/2023 20:29:24 – Mpondwe (Uganda) (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
