At a school in western Uganda, rebels affiliated with the Islamic State group (IS) have executed over 40 persons, the majority of whom were students. Following the attack on the Lhubiriha secondary school in Mpondwe, an additional eight individuals are still in serious condition. Dorm room boys are among the deceased. Authorities claim that several additional people, especially girls, have been kidnapped.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)-based Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) have taken responsibility. The assault took place at the school in the Kasese district of western Uganda at about 23:30 (20:30 GMT) on Friday. According to the Ugandan army, five suspected ADF rebels carried out the raid, torching the school buildings and robbing the grocery shop.
The army’s Maj Gen Dick Olum claimed that some of the lads were burned to death or hacked to death.
Before hurling a bomb into a hostel, the terrorists attacked the students with machetes, according to survivors who spoke to the local media. It is unknown how old the victims were.
DNA tests will be required to identify some of the victims because they were allegedly severely burned. The attackers are alleged to have set the students’ bedding on fire and are suspected of having planted bombs nearby.
Social media is rife with images of the school’s structures on fire. According to Fred Enanga, a spokesman for the national police, many of the bodies were taken to Bwera Hospital. Soldiers are following ADF insurgents towards the Virunga national park in the DRC, which is home to rare animals like mountain gorillas and is Africa’s oldest and largest national park.
The wide area, which borders Uganda and Rwanda, is used as a hideout by militias like the ADF. In order to free the kidnapped people and defeat this organisation, our soldiers are chasing the enemy, according to defence spokesperson Felix Kulayigye on Twitter.
Local residents have demeaned the authority. “If they are telling us the borders are secure and security is tight, I want the security to tell us where they were when these killers came to kill our people,” one resident spoke to the reporters.
“These are terrorist groups who want to make and impact through violence, they want to show that they are there, show that they are active to their colleagues and allies in ISIS in other parts of the world,” Mr Moncrieff averred.
The ADF, which claims that the government is persecuting Muslims, was founded in eastern Uganda in the 1990s and has since fought against longtime President Yoweri Museveni.
For the past 20 years, ADF insurgents have operated out of the DRC. Musa Seka Baluku, Makulu’s successor, is said to have originally sworn adherence to the Islamic State organisation in 2016, but it wasn’t until April 2019 that IS first confirmed its presence in the region.
Although the Islamic State as a whole has been mostly vanquished, there are still a sizable number of militant organisations that are linked to the IS all over the Middle East and Africa. After years of concealment, the ADF was accused of being behind a string of attacks in late 2021, including suicide bombs in Kampala, the country’s capital.
