Uganda security forces are seen standing at the premises of an attack in Mpondwe, Uganda, on June 17, 2023 at the Mpondwe Lhubiriha Secondary School.
| Photo Credit: AFP
Ugandan authorities recovered the bodies of 41 people, including 38 students, who were burned, shot or hacked to death after suspected rebels attacked a secondary school near the border with Congo, the local mayor said Saturday.
At least six people were abducted by the rebels, who fled across the porous border into Congo after the raid on Friday night, according to the Ugandan military.
The victims included the students, one guard and two members of the local community who were killed outside the school, Mpondwe-Lhubiriha Mayor Selevest Mapoze told The Associated Press.
Mr. Mapoze said that some of the students suffered fatal burns when the rebels set fire to a dormitory and others were shot or hacked with machetes.
The raid, which happened around 11.30 p.m., involved about five attackers, the Ugandan military said. Soldiers from a nearby brigade who responded to the attack found the school on fire, “with dead bodies of students lying in the compound,” military spokesman Brig. Felix Kulayigye said in a statement.
That statement cited 47 bodies, with eight other people wounded and being treated at a local hospital. Ugandan troops are “pursuing the perpetrators to rescue the abducted students” who were forced to carry looted food toward Congo’s Virunga National Park, it said.
Ugandan authorities said the Allied Democratic Forces, an extremist group that has been launching attacks for years from its bases in volatile eastern Congo, carried out the raid on Lhubiriha Secondary School in the border town of Mpondwe.
The school, co-ed and privately owned, is located in the Ugandan district of Kasese, about 2km from the Congo border.
“A dormitory was set on fire and a food store looted. So far 25 bodies have been recovered from the school and transferred to Bwera Hospital,” police said in a statement.
Joe Walusimbi, an official representing Uganda’s president in Kasese, toldThe Associated Press over the phone that authorities were trying to verify the number of victims and those abducted.
“Some bodies were burnt beyond recognition,” he said.
Winnie Kiiza, an influential political leader and a former lawmaker from the region, condemned the “cowardly attack” on Twitter. She said, “attacks on schools are unacceptable and are a grave violation of children’s rights,” adding that schools should always be “a safe place for every student.”
The Allied Democratic Forces, or ADF, is accused of launching many attacks on civilians in recent years, notably on civilian communities, in remote parts of eastern Congo.
The ADF has long opposed the rule of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, a U.S. security ally who has been in power since 1986.
Established in the early 1990s in Uganda, the ADF later was forced to flee into eastern Congo, where many rebel groups are able to operate because of the country’s limited control over the area.
The group also has ties with the Islamic State group.
In March , at least 19 people were killed in Congo by suspected ADF extremists.
Ugandan authorities for years have vowed to track down ADF militants “at home and abroad.” In 2021, Uganda launched joint air and artillery strikes in Congo against the group.
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