/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24016885/STK093_Google_04.jpg)
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24808816/Starfield__The_Settled_Systems___Supra_Et_Ultra_____Starfield__The_Settled_Systems___Supra_Et_Ultra_2023_7_25_94252.263_1440p_streamshot.png)
Islamic State-linked rebels have been accused of killing dozens of students in an attack on a secondary school near Uganda’s border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Ugandan authorities accused five members of the Allied Democratic Forces, or ADF, of atrocities, an Islamic extremist group that operates from Ituri and parts of North Kivu in the DRC, terrorizing local people and occasionally killing Ugandans crosses into. The US has declared the ADF an ally of the Islamic State.
“The school was burning with bodies of students in the compound,” the Ugandan defense spokesman’s office said on Saturday.
Uganda’s armed forces said “a group of ADF terrorists” attacked a private secondary school near the porous border with the DRC at 11.30 pm on Friday, killing 37 people, wounding eight and injuring six. Kidnapped.
Citing local officials, Ugandan journalists reported that the number of casualties had risen to 41, most of whom were students.
Mumbere Bright, one of the survivors told Uganda new vision The newspaper said the attackers entered a hostel in the town of Mpondwe during a blackout.
“The rebels asked for Muslims among the students, but there were none,” he said.
“The rebels said that they do not kill fellow believers. With their machetes, axes and sharp objects, they killed every student in front of their eyes.
Ugandan police said troops were “in hot pursuit” of the attackers to free the abducted students. He said the rebels were moving towards Virunga National Park, which is just across the border in the DRC.
The ADF originated in Uganda in the 1990s and opposes the regime of President Yoweri Museveni. Museveni, who has been in power since 1986, deployed troops to eastern DRC to fight the ADF.
In November 2021, Ugandan officials blamed the ADF for twin explosions in the capital Kampala that killed three people. In 1998, not far from the latest attack, the ADF killed up to 80 students at another school.
Uganda has also sent troops to Somalia to fight al-Shabaab terrorists linked to al-Qaeda. This month, Museveni said that 54 Ugandan soldiers had been killed in an al-Shabaab attack on the compound housing African Union peacekeepers in Somalia.
During the 2010 Football World Cup, Al-Shabaab bombed several bars in Kampala, killing more than 70 people.
