By Abimbola Ogunnaike
Militants linked to Islamic State killed 25 people in a terrorist attack on a school in western Uganda near the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ugandan police said on Saturday, 17 June, 2023.
“So far 25 bodies have been recovered from the school and transferred to Bwera Hospital. Also recovered are eight victims, who remain in critical condition at Bwera Hospital,” Ugandan police said on Twitter but did not say how many of the dead were school children.
Soldiers were pursuing the attackers who fled towards Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo, police added.
Members of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a Ugandan group based in eastern Congo that has pledged allegiance to Islamic State, attacked Lhubirira secondary school in Mpondwe, burning a dormitory and looting food late on Friday, 16 June, 2023, police said.
A vast expanse on the border with Uganda and Rwanda, Virunga is the oldest nature reserve in Africa and is renowned worldwide as a sanctuary for rare species, including mountain gorillas.
Militias ,of which dozens are active in eastern DR Cong, also the use the park as a hideout.
Originally insurgents in Uganda, theADF gained a foothold in eastern DR Congo in the 1990s and have since been accused of killing thousands of civilians.
Since 2019, some ADF attacks in eastern DR Congo have been claimed by the Islamic State group, which describes the fighters as a local offshoot, the Islamic State Central Africa Province.
It is not the first attack on a school in Uganda attributed to the militia.
In June 1998, 80 students were burnt to death in their dormitories in an ADF attack on Kichwamba Technical Institute near the border of DR Congo. More than 100 students were abducted.
Uganda and DR Congo launched a joint offensive in 2021 to drive the ADF out of their Congolese strongholds, but the measures have so far failed to end the group’s attacks.
In March this year, the United States announced a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to the capture of the ADF’s leader.
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