How Blood Saved Student from Terrorists Who Claimed 40 Lives
Julius Isingoma described to the BBC how he remarkably survived a nighttime attack by suspected Islamist rebels on the dormitory of his school in western Uganda.
“I smeared the blood of my dead colleagues in my mouth, ears and on my head so that the attackers would think I was dead,” he said, when we met him at Bwera General Hospital in Kasese district.
Friday night’s attack on the secondary school in the small town of Mpondwe claimed the lives of approximately 40 individuals, 37 of whom were students.
Yoweri Museveni, the president of Uganda, attributed the attack to the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), adding that they were “possibly working with other criminals because I hear that the school had some disputes.”
He did not elaborate, but pledged to hunt down the militants in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where they were hiding.
ADF has not commented yet. It was founded in the 1990s and took up arms against Museveni, alleging that the minority Muslim population was persecuted.
In 2016, its leader pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) group, according to reports.
IS did not acknowledge its presence in the region until April 2019, when it claimed an attack on army positions near the Ugandan border.
This statement announced the “Central Africa Province” (Iscap) of the Islamic State. It is believed that six students were kidnapped as the militants fled to the DR Congo.
Isingoma was one of six individuals who survived the several-hour-long assault. He did not identify the assailants, but said they were males armed with firearms who launched their attack at approximately 10:00 p.m.
Another student
They arrived at the boys’ dormitory, but after realizing they were in peril, the students had locked the door. “When they were unable to open the door, they threw a bomb inside the dormitory and then used hammers and axes to break it down,” he explained.
When the militants entered the dormitory, Isingoma was standing behind many of the students who had formed a shield near the door and were shot to death.
He quickly climbed to the top of a bunk bed, removed several ceiling boards, and jumped inside to conceal.
From there, he witnessed helplessly as the assailants brutally murdered his colleagues before torching mattresses and fleeing. “I was overcome by the smoke and fell back with a thud into the dormitory,” he said.
The militants heard the impact and returned. At that moment, Isingoma realized that he had to survive the attack.
“I lay next to the bloodied bodies of my friends and thought very fast. Then I smeared a lot of blood into my ears, mouth and on my head and when the militants came, they checked my hand for a pulse and left,” Julius said.
Godwin Mumbere, another survivor, was in the same dormitory. The 18-year-old recalled that the attackers went to the girls’ dormitory, dragged them outside, and murdered them with machetes.
They then entered the boys’ dormitory, smashed through the door, and attacked the pupils. The bed under which Mumbere was hiding was overturned, and his companions fell to the ground and were killed. “The attackers saw me, but thought I was dead,” he told BBC.
However, they left the dormitory and returned to assure that everyone was dead. “At this point, they shot me in the hand and set fire to the dorm,” he explained.
He fled the dormitory, scaled the school gate, and dashed through a cocoa plantation to a nearby hardware store.
Until he was rescued, he concealed under a vehicle at a lodge.The senior administrator of Bwera General Hospital, Clarice Bwambare, stated that the hospital began receiving the bodies of students and locals at approximately 1 a.m., approximately three hours after the attack.
Eighteen of the twenty bodies they recovered were students.
Currently, five survivors are recuperating at the hospital. A child is in critical condition at the Intensive Care Unit.
A surgeon advised that she cannot be moved due to a grievous head injury caused by a rebel hammer blow.
How Blood Saved Student from Terrorists Who Claimed 40 Lives
