Kampala, Uganda — Ugandan authorities recovered the our bodies of 41 folks — together with 38 college students — who have been burned, shot or hacked to demise after suspected rebels attacked a secondary college close to the border with Congo, the native mayor stated Saturday.
At the very least six folks have been kidnapped by the rebels, who fled throughout the porous border into Congo after the raid on Friday night time, in keeping with the Ugandan navy.
The victims included the scholars, one guard and two members of the local people who have been killed outdoors the college, Mpondwe-Lhubiriha Mayor Selevest Mapoze informed The Related Press.
Mapoze stated that a few of the college students suffered deadly burns when the rebels set fireplace to a dormitory and others have been shot or hacked with machetes.
The raid, which occurred round 11:30 p.m., concerned about 5 attackers, the Ugandan navy stated. Troopers from a close-by brigade who responded to the assault discovered the college on fireplace, “with useless our bodies of scholars mendacity within the compound,” navy spokesman Brig. Felix Kulayigye stated in an announcement.
That assertion cited 47 our bodies, with eight different folks wounded and being handled at an area hospital. Ugandan troops are “pursuing the perpetrators to rescue the kidnapped college students” who have been pressured to hold looted meals towards Congo’s Virunga Nationwide Park, it stated.
Ugandan authorities stated the Allied Democratic Forces, an extremist group that has been launching assaults for years from its bases in risky japanese Congo, carried out the raid on Lhubiriha Secondary Faculty within the border city of Mpondwe. The college, co-ed and privately owned, is positioned within the Ugandan district of Kasese, about 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) from the Congo border.
Joe Walusimbi, an official representing Uganda’s president in Kasese, informed the AP over the cellphone that a few of the victims “have been burnt past recognition.”
Winnie Kiiza, an influential political chief and a former lawmaker from the area, condemned the “cowardly assault” on Twitter. She stated “assaults on faculties are unacceptable and are a grave violation of kids’s rights,” including that faculties ought to at all times be “a protected place for each pupil.”
The ADF has been accused of launching many assaults in recent times concentrating on civilians in distant components of japanese Congo. The shadowy group not often claims duty for assaults.
The ADF has lengthy opposed the rule of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, a U.S. safety ally who has held energy on this East African nation since 1986.
The group was established within the early Nineties by some Ugandan Muslims, who stated they’d been sidelined by Museveni’s insurance policies. On the time, the rebels staged lethal assaults in Ugandan villages in addition to within the capital, together with a 1998 assault through which 80 college students have been massacred in a city not from the scene of the most recent assault.
A Ugandan navy assault later pressured the ADF into japanese Congo, the place many insurgent teams are in a position to function as a result of the central authorities has restricted management there.
The group has since established ties with the Islamic State group.
In March, a minimum of 19 folks have been killed in Congo by suspected ADF extremists.
Ugandan authorities for years have vowed to trace down ADF militants even outdoors Ugandan territory. In 2021, Uganda launched joint air and artillery strikes in Congo in opposition to the group.
