Friday 26 / April / 2024
Kampala: At least 41 people have been killed and eight injured after a school in western Uganda was attacked by armed rebels from the Allied Democratic Force, Uganda’s police said on Saturday, according to media report.
Armed rebels of the ADF, which has ties to ISIS, attacked the Lhubirira secondary school in Mpondwe, along the country’s border with the Democratic Republic of Congo on Friday night, the police said.
Uganda Police Force Spokesperson Fred Enanga wrote on Twitter: “A dormitory was burnt and a food store looted. So far 25 bodies have been recovered from the school and transferred to Bwera Hospital.”
A further eight people remain in critical condition at Bwera Hospital, he added, as per CNN.
The spokesperson said that Ugandan Police and the Uganda People’s Defence Force were in “hot pursuit” of the suspects.
Some students reportedly taken hostage
The Daily Monitor cited a senior military official as saying that some of the students had been abducted.
The military official said the boys had been locked into one dormitory, which was set ablaze, while the girls were hacked with machetes in another dormitory. Some of the victims were shot dead.
In an earlier tweet, police described how they had retrieved 25 bodies. and that eight people were in a critical condition in the hospital.
Ugandan forces were pursuing the attackers who fled towards Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo, police said.
The ADF found a foothold in eastern DRC in the 1990s. It has since been accused of killing thousands of civilians.
The group has long opposed the rule of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, a US security ally who has been in power since 1986.
A Ugandan military assault later forced the ADF into eastern Congo, where many rebel groups are able to operate because the central government has limited control there.
In April, the ADF attacked a village in eastern DRC, leaving at least 20 people dead.
