The death toll from the nighttime jihadist attack on a high school in western Uganda, the worst in the country in years, has risen to 41 dead, mostly students, announced on Saturday June 17, Uganda People’s Defense Force (UPDF) spokesperson Felix Kulayigye. An initial report had reported at least twenty-five dead, all “school students”, aged 16 and over, and eight injured people in critical condition. All bodies found were “taken to Bwera Hospital Mortuary”, Kulayigye said.

The Ugandan army has announced that it is in pursuit of the attackers of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), an Islamist militia which has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) organization, after their raid against this high school located in Kasese district, near the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) border. The attackers fled towards the Virunga National Park located in Congolese territory.

Uganda National Police spokesman Fred Enanga said the ADF raided Lhubiriha High School, Mpondwe, near Bwera where “a dormitory was burned down and a food store looted”.

The facility is less than two kilometers from the border with the DRC, where the ADF has been active and is accused of killing thousands of civilians since the 1990s. The UPDF spokesman said the ADF could also kidnapped several people. “Our forces are pursuing the enemy to rescue abductees and destroy this group,” he said in a statement.

Reacting to the attack, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Saturday condemned it “strongly” and called for the immediate release “of those abducted”. France also condemned “in the strongest terms the abominable attack” on this school, while the US State Department’s Office of African Affairs said it was “appalled”.

Pursuit of the attackers in the DRC

A vast expanse on the border with Uganda and Rwanda, 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 DRC – also use the park as a hideout.

Originally mainly Muslim Ugandan rebels, the ADF have been rooted 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.

This 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 Technical Institute of Kichwamba, near the DRC border. Over a hundred students had been abducted.

Uganda and the DRC 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 offering a reward of up to 5 million dollars (4.56 million euros) for information that could lead to their leader, a Ugandan in his forties named Musa. Baluku.