41 Burned and Killed in Horrific School Massacre

A horrific massacre has seen 41 people, including 38 students, burned, shot or hacked to death when suspected rebels with links to ISIS attacked a private school near Uganda’s border with the Democratic Repubic of Congo (DRC).

At least six people were abducted by the rebels, who fled across the porous border into DRC after the raid on Friday night, according to the Ugandan military.

Victims included the students, one guard and two members of the local community who were killed outside the school, Mpondwe-Lhubiriha Mayor Selevest Mapoze said.

Some of the students suffered fatal burns when the rebels set fire to a dormitory and others were shot or hacked with machetes, he added.

The raid, which happened at about 11.30pm, involved at least five attackers, the Ugandan military said. Soldiers from a nearby brigade who responded to the attack found the school on fire, “with dead bodies of students lying in the compound,” military spokesman Brigadier Felix Kulayigye said in a statement.

That statement cited 47 bodies, with eight other people wounded and being treated at a local hospital. Ugandan troops are “pursuing the perpetrators to rescue the abducted students” who were forced to carry looted food toward DRC’s Virunga National Park, it said.

Ugandan authorities said the Allied Democratic Forces, an extremist group that has been launching attacks for years from its bases in volatile eastern DRC, carried out the raid on Lhubiriha Secondary School in the border town of Mpondwe.

The school, co-educational and privately owned, is located in the Ugandan district of Kasese, about 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) from the border.

Joe Walusimbi, an official representing Uganda’s president in Kasese, told AP over the phone that some of the victims “were burnt beyond recognition”.

Winnie Kiiza, an influential political leader and a former lawmaker from the region, condemned the “cowardly attack” on Twitter. She said “attacks on schools are unacceptable and are a grave violation of children’s rights,” adding that schools should always be “a safe place for every student”.

The ADF has been accused of launching many attacks in recent years targeting civilians in remote parts of eastern DRC. The shadowy group rarely claims responsibility for attacks.

The ADF has long opposed the rule of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, a US security ally who has held power in this East African country since 1986.

The group was established in the early 1990s by some Ugandan Muslims, who said they had been sidelined by Museveni’s policies.

At the time, the rebels staged deadly attacks in Ugandan villages as well as in the capital, including a 1998 attack in which 80 students were massacred in a town not far from the scene of the latest attack.

A Ugandan military assault later forced the ADF into eastern DRC, where many rebel groups are able to operate because the central government has limited control there.

The group has since established ties with the Islamic State group.

In March, at least 19 people were killed in DRC by suspected ADF extremists.

Ugandan authorities for years have vowed to track down ADF militants even outside Ugandan territory. In 2021, Uganda launched joint air and artillery strikes in DRC against the group.