Faridah N Kulumba
Africa-Press – Uganda. The total number of people who died after the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) attacked Uganda on Friday night rose from 41 to 42 after one of eight people who had survived with serious injuries in the atrocity died on Sunday.
The unfortunate incident followed the ADF rebels linked to ISIS killing 41 people, including 37 students who were burned, shot, or hacked to death with machetes in a sickening attack on Mpondwe-Lhubiriha School in Kasese District, about 1.2 miles from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) border.
On Saturday 17th of this month, Ugandan authorities recovered the bodies of 41 victims, which included 37 students, one guard, and two members of the local community who were shot outside the school. Among the 37 students who were killed 17 were boys and 20 girls and some of them were burnt beyond recognition.
An unknown number of people were abducted by the rebels, who fled across the porous border into Congo after the raid.
The attack
According to the Ugandan authorities the rebels from the ADF who have been launching attacks for years from their bases in the volatile eastern DR Congo and have ties to the Islamic State group (ISI), carried out the raid on Lubiri Secondary School in the border town of Mpondwe.
When the rebels attacked the school they forced themselves into the student’s dormitories and started shooting and hacking others with machetes. After thinking that all the students were dead, they set the dormitories on fire and those who were still alive suffered fatal burns. And they also looted food before fleeing.
Rescue mission
Officers said Ugandan troops have already started tracking the attackers into Congo’s Virunga National Park.
In the statement that was issued by the military after the attack confirmed that Ugandan troops inside Congo ‘are pursuing the enemy to rescue those abducted.
The Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) have stepped up their deployment along the border between Uganda and DR Congo.
UN Secretary-general Antonio Guterres condemned the attack in a statement, urging “the importance of collective efforts, including through enhanced regional partnerships, to tackle cross-border insecurity between (DR Congo) and Uganda and restore durable peace in the area”.
Museveni’s statement
The President of Uganda H.E Yoweri Kaguta Museveni said that the ADF is one of the fiercest rebels that have become desperate and cowardly to pressure exerted by both the UPDF and DR Congo national army following a joint operation launched in November 2021.
Museveni’s statement he sent on his Twitter account said that the ADF has been attacking unarmed Ugandans (soft target) thinking Uganda would be forced to recall their troops from the DR Congo which is not possible.
The ADF has been accused of launching many attacks in recent years, targeting civilians, in remote parts of eastern DR Congo.
The president had many questions about the attack and how it happened without any alarm. He wondered why Ugandan troops in eastern DR Congo failed to detect the ADF’s entry into Uganda.
The ADF has long opposed the rule of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, a US security ally who has been in power since 1986.
The group was established in the early 1990s by some Ugandan Muslims, who said they had been sidelined by Mr. 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 from the scene of the latest attack.
Operation Shujja
In 2021, Uganda and DR Congo launched a joint operation against the ADF, an armed group allied with Islamic State. The joint forces conducted search operations in the air and artillery strikes against suspected ADF bases in the forests of eastern Congo.
According to security sources and local media, at least 1,700 Ugandan soldiers crossed into eastern Congo to join Congolese forces to battle the ADF underOperation dubbed ‘Shujja’ which means hero in Swahili.
Uganda said that its troops sent into the eastern DR Congo where to stay as long as needed to defeat Islamist militants, with the progress of the mission to be evaluated after two months. However, on 13 December 2021, DR Congo President Felix Tshisekedi announced that the Ugandan UPDF troop’s presence was to be temporary in his country. He vowed to ensure that the presence of Ugandan troops in Congo, was strictly limited to the time strictly necessary for this operation.
Uganda blamed the ADF for a triple suicide bombing in its capital Kampala on Nov. 16, which killed seven people, including the bombers.
The ADF began as an uprising in Uganda but has been based in Congo since the late 1990s. It pledged allegiance to Islamic State in mid-2019 and is accused of killing hundreds of villagers in frequent raids over the past two years.
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