KAMPALA, Uganda
A bereaved Ugandan border town on Sunday began burying the victims of a brutal attack on a school by suspected extremist rebels that left 42 people dead, most of them students, as security forces stepped up patrols along the frontier with volatile eastern Congo.
One of eight people wounded in
Friday night’s attack, in which 38 students were killed, died overnight, said
Selevest Mapoze, mayor of the town of Mpondwe-Lhubiriha.
“Most of the relatives have
come to take their bodies” from the morgue, he said.
In addition to the 38
students, the victims include a school guard and three civilians. At least two
of them, members of the same family, were buried Sunday.
Some students were burned beyond recognition; others were shot or hacked to death after militants armed with guns and machetes attacked Lhubiriha Secondary School, co-ed and privately owned, which is located about 2 kilometers (just over a mile) from the Congo border. Ugandan authorities believe at least six students were abducted, taken as porters back inside Congo.
U.N. Secretary-General António
Guterres condemned the attack in a statement, urging “the importance of
collective efforts, including through enhanced regional partnerships, to tackle
cross-border insecurity between (Congo) and Uganda and restore durable peace in
the area.”
The atmosphere in
Mpondwe-Lhubiriha was tense but calm Sunday as Ugandan security forces roamed
the streets outside and near the school, which was protected by a police
cordon.
The attack is blamed on the
Allied Democratic Forces, or ADF, which rarely claims responsibility for
attacks. It has established ties with the Islamic State group.
In a statement on Sunday, his
first comment on the incident, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni described the
attack as “criminal, desperate, terrorist and futile,” vowing to deploy more
troops on the Ugandan side of the border.
The ADF has been accused of
launching many attacks in recent years targeting civilians in remote parts of
eastern Congo, including
one in March in which 19 people were killed.
The ADF has long opposed the rule of Museveni, a U.S. security ally who has held power in this East African country since 1986.
The group was established in
the early 1990s by some Ugandan Muslims, who said they had been sidelined by
Museveni’s policies. At the time, the rebels staged deadly attacks in Ugandan
villages as well as in the capital, including a 1998 attack in which 80 students
were massacred in a town not far from Friday’s raid.
The attack followed the same
playbook: violence against students. The attackers targeted two dormitories,
using extreme force when the boys resisted, according to Ugandan officials.
“This terrorist group couldn’t
enter, so they threw in a bomb, they threw in a petrol bomb,” said Education
Minister Janet Museveni, who also is Uganda’s first lady. “So, these children
were burnt.”
Students have been attacked
because schools are considered soft targets. Pupils are sometimes recruited
into rebels ranks or used to carry food and supplies for insurgents, and such
raids provide media coverage coveted by extremists.
The raid appears to have taken
Ugandan authorities by surprise: first responders arrived after the attackers
had left.
Some villagers have
temporarily moved away from the Mpondwe-Lhubiriha community, fearing more
attacks, Mapoze said.
The border is porous, with multiple footpaths not monitored by authorities. Many parts of eastern Congo are lawless, allowing groups like the ADF to operate because the central government in Kinshasa, the capital, has limited authority there.
But attacks by the ADF on the
Ugandan side of the border are rare, thanks in part to the presence of an
alpine brigade of Ugandan troops in the region. Ugandan
forces have been deployed to eastern Congo since 2021 under a military
operation to hunt ADF militants down and stop them from attacking civilians
across the border.
The deployment of Ugandan
troops inside Congo followed attacks in which at least four civilians were
killed when suicide bombers believed to be members of the ADF detonated their
explosives at two locations in Kampala, the capital, in November 2021. One
attack happened near the Parliament building and the second near a busy police
station.
Military pressure on the
rebels deep inside Congolese territory had forced them to splinter into smaller
groups such as the one that attacked the school, aiming to “force us to
withdraw our Army to defend the Uganda villages and that would save them from
the losses they are now suffering,” according to President Museveni.
“Especially now that the Congo government allowed us to operate on the Congo side also, we have no excuse in not hunting down the ADF terrorists into extinction,” he said.
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