More than 40 people, mostly students, were reported to have been murdered by militants affiliated with the Islamic State organization at a school in western Uganda.
The attack on Lhubirira Secondary School in Mpondwe has been described as one of Uganda’s worst terrorist incidents in decades with dormitories burnt down by the assailants and other people being hacked to death. Some students were burnt to death in the dormitory fire and others were shot and hacked to death with machetes.
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The school serves students between the ages of 13 and 18 and is located in the town of Kasese at Uganda’s border with Congo. Authorities in Uganda have accused the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a militia with a base in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and are hunting down the attackers who escaped back toward the border with six captives.
Speaking to the BBC, locals in the area said that the attack happened at around 10 p.m. when the students were supposed to be going to bed. They say that locals are among those killed in the attack and they do not understand how the attackers entered the school despite the heavy military presence in the area.
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Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni has said that his government would bring the attackers to justice promising to hunt the militants “into extinction”. He has ordered more troops into the Southern area of Rwenzori Mountain where, in the 1990s, the ADF started their uprising against Uganda’s long-serving president Museveni.
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Their action, the desperate, cowardly, terrorist action, therefore, will not save them. We are bringing new forces to the Uganda side as we continue the hunting on the Congo side.
The president said
