Police reported on Saturday that 25 people were killed and several others were kidnapped by militants affiliated with Islamic State during an attack on a school in western Uganda close to the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
According to defence spokesperson Felix Kulayigye on Twitter, “Our forces are pursuing the enemy to rescue those abducted and destroy this group.”
The assailants, who belong to allied democratic forces (ADF) rebels who have sworn allegiance to Islamic State, did not reveal how many persons they had kidnapped.
Late on Friday, the attackers struck Lhubirira Secondary School in the western border town of Mpondwe, setting fire to a dormitory and stealing food, according to the police. Informing about the investigation, the police wrote on Twitter, “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.” Police said the perpetrators ran off in the direction of the Congo’s Virunga National Park.
From a first base in the Rwenzori Mountains, the ADF rebels started their uprising against President Yoweri Museveni in the 1990s.
The group was mainly destroyed by the Ugandan military, but survivors crossed the border and hid in the vast woods of eastern Congo, where they have continued their insurgency and attacked both civilian and military targets in Uganda and eastern Congo ever since.
At least 20 people were killed when the ADF launched an assault on a community in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo in April.
