In a morgue in western Uganda, distraught families waited Sunday, June 18, to be fixed on the fate of their loved ones, after the jihadist raid in a high school which caused the death of several dozen students .
At least forty-one people were killed in the night from Friday to Saturday, mostly students, in this attack, the worst of its type perpetrated in the country for years. The assault targeted Lhubiriha High School, in Mpondwe, near the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Ugandan army and police officials have blamed members of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), an Islamist militia that has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) organization.
Victims were hacked to death with machetes, shot and burned to death in the attack that shocked Uganda and drew strong international condemnation.
The attackers fled to Virunga National Park in Congolese territory, also abducting six people after their deadly raid, according to the Ugandan army and police who promised to release the hostages.
Many victims were burned beyond recognition when the assailants set fire to a locked dormitory in the high school, complicating the identification of the victims. At a morgue in Bwera, a town near the scene of the attack, families wept as the bodies of their loved ones were put in coffins and taken away for burial. But many other families still have no news of their missing loved ones. The remains of many of the victims in the high school fire have been transferred to the town of Fort Portal where DNA testing is to be carried out.
“They’re going to pay”
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres called the attack “appalling” while Washington, a close ally of Uganda, and the African Union also condemned the bloodshed and offered their condolences. Seventeen male students were burned in their dormitory and twenty female students were stabbed to death, Ugandan First Lady and Education Minister Janet Museveni said.
A security guard and three other people were also killed, officials said. The military will hunt down “those evil people and they will pay for what they did,” Museveni said on Saturday.
But questions have been raised about how the attackers managed to elude surveillance, in a border region with a heavy military presence. The school is less than two kilometers from the border with the DRC, where the ADF has been active and has been accused of killing thousands of civilians since the 1990s.
Major General Dick Olum told Agence France-Presse on Saturday 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.
The attack on this school is the deadliest in Uganda since the double attack in Kampala in 2010, which killed 76 people during a raid claimed by the Islamist group Shabaab based in Somalia.
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. In June 1998, eighty students were burned to death in their dormitories in an ADF attack on the Kichwamba Technical Institute near the DRC border. Over a hundred students had been abducted.