"Our forces are pursuing the enemy to rescue the abductees and destroy the group," Ugandan Defense Ministry spokesman Felix Kulayigye said in a statement.
The school was guarded by Ugandan police and military after the bloody attack. Photo: Reuters
Police said the attackers, who belonged to the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) rebel group, fled towards Congo’s Virunga National Park. They announced that 39 people were killed and eight others were seriously injured in the attack at Lhubirira High School in Mpondwe.
Neither police nor the military said how many of the dead were students. However, they said the attackers, numbering about five, set fire to a dormitory and looted food.
Major General Dick Olum, the western Uganda army commander, said the attackers had planned ahead, sending an unidentified assailant to the school to check out the terrain before the attack.
“That’s how the attackers came and locked the boys’ doors. The boys actually tried to fight back, but were overpowered… In the girls’ dormitory, they saw the door open so they rushed in and killed them,” Olum told reporters.
ADF rebels launched an insurgency against President Yoweri Museveni in the 1990s from an initial base in the Rwenzori Mountains. The group was largely defeated by the Ugandan army.
However, remnants of the group fled across the border into the vast jungles of eastern Congo, from where they regularly launch attacks on civilian and military targets in both Congo and Uganda.
In April, the ADF attacked a village in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, killing at least 20 people.
Hoang Anh (according to Reuters)
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