KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) – Ugandan authorities recovered the our bodies of 41 folks, together with 38 college students, who have been burned, shot or hacked to dying after suspected rebels attacked a secondary faculty close to the border with Congo, the native mayor mentioned Saturday.
At least six folks have been kidnapped by the rebels, who fled throughout the porous border into Congo after the raid on Friday evening, based on the Ugandan navy.
The victims included the scholars, one guard and two members of the local people who have been killed exterior the varsity, Mpondwe-Lhubiriha Mayor Selevest Mapoze advised The Associated Press.
Mapoze mentioned 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 mentioned. Soldiers from a close-by brigade who responded to the assault discovered the varsity on fireplace, “with dead bodies of students lying in the compound,” navy spokesman Brig. Felix Kulayigye mentioned 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 abducted students” who have been pressured to hold looted meals towards Congo’s Virunga National Park, it mentioned.
Ugandan authorities mentioned the Allied Democratic Forces, an extremist group that has been launching assaults for years from its bases in risky jap Congo, carried out the raid on Lhubiriha Secondary School within the border city of Mpondwe. The faculty, 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, advised the AP over the telephone that a few of the victims “were burnt beyond recognition.”
Winnie Kiiza, an influential political chief and a former lawmaker from the area, condemned the “cowardly attack” on Twitter. She mentioned “attacks on schools are unacceptable and are a grave violation of children’s rights,” including that colleges ought to at all times be “a safe place for every student.”
The ADF has been accused of launching many assaults in recent times concentrating on civilians in distant components of jap 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 mentioned they’d been sidelined by Museveni’s insurance policies. At the time, the rebels staged lethal assaults in Ugandan villages in addition to within the capital, together with a 1998 assault wherein 80 college students have been massacred in a city not from the scene of the newest assault.
A Ugandan navy assault later pressured the ADF into jap Congo, the place many insurgent teams are capable of 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 , at the least 19 folks have been killed in Congo by suspected ADF extremists.
Ugandan authorities for years have vowed to trace down ADF militants even exterior Ugandan territory. In 2021, Uganda launched joint air and artillery strikes in Congo towards the group.
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