38 students among 41 killed in IS-linked attack in Uganda

Kampala, June 17

Ugandan authorities recovered the bodies of 41 persons, including 38 students, who were burned, shot or hacked to death after suspected rebels linked to the Islamic State attacked a school near the border with Congo, the local mayor said on Saturday.

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

The 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.

Mapoze said that some of the students suffered fatal burns when the rebels set fire to a dormitory and others were shot or hacked with machetes. The raid, which happened around 11.30 pm, involved about 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 Brig 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 Congo's Virunga National Park, it said.

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

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

“A dormitory was set on fire and a food store looted. So far 25 bodies have been recovered from the school and transferred to Bwera Hospital,” police said in a statement.

Joe Walusimbi, an official representing Uganda’s president in Kasese, said 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 Congo. The shadowy group rarely claims responsibility for attacks. — AP