According to the police spokesman, this attack was carried out by the Armed Democratic Forces, an Islamist militia that has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group.
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The balance sheet is heavy. At least 37 people died in a “terrorist attack” against a high school in Mpondwe, western Uganda, on Friday June 16, the police spokesman announced on Saturday. “Unfortunately, 37 bodies were discovered and transported to the mortuary of Bwera hospital”, he specified. A previous assessment reported eight people in a “critical state”of which it is not known whether they have since succumbed.
Also according to this spokesman, this attack was carried out by the Armed Democratic Forces (ADF), an Islamist militia which has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group and which is based in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Investigators say dormitories were burned down and students were stabbed to death. Law enforcement was alerted on Friday night.
Deadliest attack since 2010
The army and the police pursued the attackers in the direction of the national park of Virunga, located on the other side of the border, in the DRC, where the ADF are. The place of the attack is less than two kilometers from the border.
Originally an insurgent in Uganda, the ADF gained a foothold in eastern DRC in the 1990s and has since been accused of killing thousands of civilians. Since 2019, some of their attacks in this part of the DRC have been claimed by the Islamic State group, which describes the fighters as those from a local branch, the Islamic State Province in Central Africa.
It is the deadliest attack in Uganda since the double attack in Kampala in 2010 which killed 76 people during a raid claimed by the Islamist group Shebab based in Somalia.