Uganda: 37 dead, mostly students, in a jihadist attack on a high school

June 17, 2023

At least 37 people were killed, mostly students, in a raid carried out overnight from Friday to Saturday by jihadists against a high school where a dormitory was set on fire, in western Uganda, the worst attack of this type in the country for years.

“Unfortunately, 37 bodies have been discovered and taken to Bwera Hospital Mortuary,” Uganda People’s Defense Force (UPDF) spokesman Felix Kulayigye said in a statement on Saturday, referring to a town close to the site of the attack.

A previous toll reported 25 dead, all students, and eight people injured in critical condition.

The Ugandan army has announced that it is in pursuit of attackers from the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), an Islamist militia that has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group, after their raid on this high school located in Kasese district, near the border of DR Congo. 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 school is less than two kilometers from the border with DR Congo, where the ADF has been active and has been accused of killing thousands of civilians since the 1990s.

The UPDF spokesman said the ADF may also have kidnapped several people.

“Our forces are pursuing the enemy to rescue abductees and destroy this group,” he said in a statement.

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 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.

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 were abducted.

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.