- The death toll from an attack on a school in western Uganda by jihadists linked to the Islamic State (IS) group has risen to 37, the country’s army said on Saturday
“Unfortunately, 37 bodies have been discovered and conveyed to Bwera hospital mortuary,” Uganda Peoples’ Defence Forces spokesman Felix Kulayigye said in a statement, referring to a town near where the attack occurred.
National police spokesman Fred Enanga had said earlier Saturday that 25 people, including children, had died in an overnight “terrorist attack” on the school by the Islamic State group-aligned Allied Democratic Forces militia.
Enanga said the ADF, which is based in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, attacked a secondary school in Mpondwe late Friday where “a dormitory was burnt and food store looted”.
Boys and girls were among the dead, he added.
Enanga said the army and police units were in “hot pursuit” of the attackers who fled in the direction of Virunga National Park over the border in DR Congo. The school is less than 2 kilometres from that border.
A vast expanse on the border with Uganda and Rwanda, Virunga is the oldest nature reserve in Africa and is renowned worldwide as a sanctuary for rare species, including mountain gorillas.
Militias, of which dozens are active in eastern DR Congo, also the use the park as a hideout.
Originally insurgents in Uganda, the ADF gained a foothold in eastern DR Congo in the 1990s and have since been accused of killing thousands of civilians.
Since 2019, some ADF attacks in eastern DR Congo have been claimed by the IS group, which describes the fighters as a local offshoot, the Islamic State Central Africa Province.
It 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 Kichwamba Technical Institute near the border of DR Congo. More than 100 students were abducted.
Uganda and DR Congo launched a joint offensive in 2021 to drive the ADF out of their Congolese strongholds, but the measures have so far failed to end the group’s attacks.
In March this year, the US announced a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to the capture of the ADF’s leader.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP)