When military forces arrived on the scene at Lhubiriha Secondary School, “the school was found burning with dead bodies of students lying in the compound,” Kulayige, a brigadier general, said in a statement.
The local mayor, Selevest Mapoze, gave an even more grim account to the Associated Press, saying 41 people, including 38 students, had been killed. Some of the victims suffered fatal burns in a dormitory that the attackers set on fire, Mapoze said, and others were shot or hacked to death with machetes.
According to Kulayige, the suspected attackers were rebels from the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), an extremist group that has ties to the Islamic State and operates in Uganda and across the border in Congo. He said Ugandan forces were “pursuing the enemy to rescue those abducted and destroy” the group.
Police spokesman Fred Enanga also said in a statement that law enforcement had joined the military in “hot pursuit” of the rebels toward Virunga National Park in Congo.
The ADF was founded by Ugandan exiles in Congo in 1995 with the aim of toppling Uganda’s government. The United Nations said in 2020 that the group may have committed crimes against humanity and war crimes, including abductions, civilian killings and the use of children as soldiers.
The group established ties with the Islamic State group in 2018 and has carried out numerous attacks against civilians, armed forces and U.N. peacekeepers inside Congo, according to the U.S. State Department, which designated the ADF an Islamic State affiliate as well as a foreign terrorist organization in 2021.
Kelsey Ables, Victoria Bisset
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