(Mpondwe) At least 41 people were killed, mostly students, in a Friday-Saturday night raid by jihadists on a secondary school in western Uganda, the worst such attack in the world. country for years.
According to army and police officials, the attackers are members of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), an Islamist militia that has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group.
After the bloody attack on this school located in the district of Kasese, near the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), they fled towards the national park of Virunga, in Congolese territory, taking along six kidnapped people.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres “strongly” condemned the attack and called for the immediate release of “the abductees”.
France for its part condemned “in the strongest terms the abominable attack” against this school, and the African Affairs office of the American State Department said it was “dismayed”.
PHOTO AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Members of the Ugandan forces in front of the Mpondwe secondary school where the attack took place.
Thirty-nine students were killed in the Lhubiriha school, said Sylvester Mapozi, the mayor of the locality of Mpondwe-Lhubiriha, where the attack occurred.
They also “killed two people, a man and a woman, bringing the death toll to 41”, he added.
According to the mayor, many of the victims were burned beyond recognition while other students were still missing.
Mumbere Edgar Dido, 16, said the attackers burst into his dormitory with machetes and firearms and fired from outside, throwing the students under their beds.
“They kept shooting from the windows, then set fire to our room while we were inside, before going to the girls’ dormitory,” he said.
“Big Attack”
PHOTO AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Women cry at the scene of the terrorist action.
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.
According to a police report seen by AFP, police and military units were alerted to a “big attack” at Lhubiriha School in Mpondwe around 11 p.m. (4 p.m. Eastern Time) on Friday evening.
When they arrived, they found “the school burning and corpses of students lying in the compound”, according to the report.
The school is less than two kilometers from the border with the DRC, where the ADF has been accused of killing thousands of civilians since the 1990s.
Virunga Park
Major General Dick Olum told AFP that intelligence services reported an ADF presence in the area at least two days before the attack, underscoring the need for an investigation.
According to this officer, the attackers had detailed information about the school.
“They knew where the boys’ and girls’ dormitories were,” said Olum of Mpondwe. “That’s why the rebels locked the boys’ dormitory and set it on fire. The rebels did not lock down the girls’ section and the girls managed to get out, but they were beaten with machetes as they ran for cover, and others were shot”.
“We have requested more firepower, aircraft to assist in the rescue of abductees and to locate rebel hideouts for military action,” he said.
The attackers fled to Virunga National Park, a vast expanse on the border with Uganda and Rwanda, taking with them six kidnapped people, Uganda People’s Defense Force (UPDF) spokesman Felix said. Kulayigye.
The Virunga are the oldest nature reserve in Africa and are a sanctuary for rare species, including mountain gorillas.
But militias – dozens of which are active in the mineral-rich eastern DRC – also use the park as a hideout.
Allegiance to IS
Originally mainly Muslim Ugandan rebels, ADF militiamen have been rooting since the mid-1990s in eastern DRC, where they are accused of having massacred thousands of civilians.
They pledged allegiance in 2019 to the Islamic State group, which presents them as its branch in central Africa, and are also accused of jihadist attacks on Ugandan soil.
Uganda and DR Congo launched a joint offensive in 2021 to drive the ADF out of their Congolese strongholds, but these operations have so far failed to end the group’s attacks.
The United States announced in early March offering a reward of up to $5 million for any information that could lead to its leader, a Ugandan in his 40s named Musa Baluku.
This is not the first attack on a school in Uganda attributed to the ADF.
In June 1998, 80 students were burned to death in their dormitories in an ADF attack on the Kichwamba Technical Institute near the DR Congo border. More than 100 students had been abducted.