At the scene of an attack in Mpondwe, Uganda, June 17, 2023. – / AFP
The death toll from the overnight jihadist attack on a high school in western Uganda has risen to 37 dead, mostly students, Uganda People’s Defense Forces spokesman Felix Kulayigye announced on Saturday (June 17) (UPDF). A previous report reported 25 dead, all “students” aged 16 and over, and eight injured in critical condition. All the bodies discovered were “transported to the morgue of Bwera Hospital,” Kulayigye said.
The Ugandan army has announced that it is pursuing attackers from the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), an Islamist militia that has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) organization, after their raid on this high school in Kasese district. near the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo). The attackers fled towards Virunga National Park in Congolese territory.
At the scene of a jihadist attack on a secondary school in Uganda, June 17, 2023 – / AFP
Uganda National Police spokesman Fred Enanga said the ADF attacked that Lhubiriha High School in Mpondwe, near Bwera, where “a dormitory was burned and a grocery store looted”.
The school is less than two kilometers from the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where the ADF operates and has been accused of killing thousands of civilians since the 1990s. The UPDF spokesman said the ADF may have kidnapped several people as well. “Our forces are pursuing the enemy to rescue kidnappers and destroy this group,” he said in a statement.
Pursuing the attackers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
The Virunga region, a vast area bordering Uganda and Rwanda, is Africa’s oldest wildlife sanctuary and a sanctuary for rare species including mountain gorillas. But militias – dozens of them active in the mineral-rich east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo – also use the park as a hiding place.
The ADF, initially mainly Muslim Ugandan rebels, has been anchored in eastern DRC since the mid-1990s, where they are accused of massacring thousands of civilians. They swore allegiance in 2019 to the Islamic State group, which it portrays as its Central African offshoot, and have also been accused of jihadist attacks on Ugandan soil.
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 Technical Institute in Kichwamba, near the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo. Over a hundred students were kidnapped.
Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the 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 that it would offer a reward of up to $5 million for any leads that could lead to their leader, a Ugandan in his 40s named Musa Baluku.