Ugandan School Attack: Rebels Kill 25 People, Abducts Students
Saturday, a spokesperson for the Ugandan armed forces stated that they are pursuing attackers of a school in the country’s west in an effort to rescue those they abducted.
Earlier, Ugandan police reported that Islamic State-affiliated militants murdered 25 people in an attack late Friday night near the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
“Our forces are pursuing the enemy to rescue those abducted and destroy this group,” defence spokesperson Felix Kulayigye said on Twitter.
At least 25 persons were killed at a school in western Uganda by Islamic State-affiliated rebels.
As a result of the attack on the Lhubiriha secondary school in Mpondwe, eight persons remain in critical condition.
Friday’s attack, according to police, was carried out by the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a Ugandan organization headquartered in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
“Up to this point, 25 bodies have been recovered from the school and transported to Bwera Hospital,” police spokesman Fred Enanga said in a statement released on Saturday.
During Friday night’s assault, a dormitory at the school was torched and a food store was ransacked, he added.
AFP reports that a number of pupils remain unaccounted for, with dozens believed to have been abducted.
The assailants fled in the direction of Virunga National Park, Africa’s oldest and largest national park, which is home to numerous endangered species, including mountain gorillas.
The vast expanse that boarders Uganda and Rwanda is also used as a hideout by militias, including the ADF.
This is the first such attack on a Ugandan school in many years. The school is located less than two kilometers (1.25 miles) from Uganda’s frontier with the DRC.
In June 1998, an attack by the ADF on Kichwamba Technical Institute near the frontier of the Democratic Republic of the Congo resulted in the deaths of 80 students, who were burned to death in their dormitories. More than one hundred pupils were kidnapped.
In the 1990s, the ADF was founded in eastern Uganda and took up arms against President Yoweri Museveni, claiming government persecution of Muslims.
After its 2001 defeat by the Ugandan army, it relocated to the DRC province of North Kivu.
Since the 1990s, ADF militants have been operating from within the DRC.
Ugandan School Attack: Rebels Kill 25 People, Abducts Students
