Forty-one bodies, 38 of them students, have been recovered after an attack by an alleged rebel group at Lhubiriha High School, in the border town of Mpondwe, in western Uganda, officials in the region said Saturday.
Mpondwe Mayor Selevest Mapoze, quoted by the Associated Press (AP), said the bodies of 38 students, a security guard and two people shot at the entrance of the school had been recovered.
Police blame Friday’s attack on rebels from the Allied Democratic Forces, which have been operating from their bases in eastern Congo for years.
The mixed and private school is located in the Ugandan district of Kasese, about two kilometers from the border with Congo.
“A dormitory was set on fire and a food warehouse was looted,” police said in an initial statement, which reported the recovery of 25 bodies, transferred to Bwera Hospital, and eight people in critical condition, as well as the existence. kidnapped from.
The statement added that Ugandan troops pursued the attackers to Congo’s Virunga National Park “to rescue the abductees”.
Ugandan police blame the attack on the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a rebel group with unclear ties to the Islamic State (IS).
Police and military are on an “intense pursuit” of the attackers in Congo’s Virunga National Park, Ugandan authorities said, quoted by Spain’s EFE news agency.
According to police, “a dormitory was set on fire and a food store looted” during the attack, which also left eight people seriously injured.
The injured “are still in critical condition in the hospital of Bwera,” said the police spokesman.
The ADF is a rebel group of Ugandan origin, but is currently based in the Congolese provinces of North Kivu and neighboring Ituri, close to the border the DRC shares with Uganda.
The objectives of the ADF are unclear and IS sometimes claims responsibility for its attacks.
While UN experts found no evidence of direct IS support for the ADF, in March 2021 the United States classified the Ugandan group as a “terrorist organization” affiliated with the jihadist group.
According to the Kivu Security Barometer (KST), the ADF have been responsible for more than 3,800 deaths in 730 attacks in the DRC since 2017.
Ugandan authorities have accused the group of staging attacks on its territory, including two suicide bombings in Kampala in November 2021 and assassinations of senior officials.
In November 2021, the Congolese and Ugandan armies launched a joint military operation on Congolese soil against the ADF, which is still ongoing, although the rebel attacks have not ceased.
Eastern DR Congo has been embroiled in a conflict fueled by rebel militias and the military since 1998, despite the presence of the UN mission in the country (Monusco), with some 16,000 uniformed troops on the ground.
Source: DN
