KAMPALA – Militants linked to the Islamic State have killed 25 people and abducted some others in an attack on a school in western Uganda near the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo, the police said on Saturday.
“Our forces are pursuing the enemy to rescue those abducted and destroy this group,” defence spokesman Felix Kulayigye said on Twitter.
The authorities did not say how many people had been abducted by the attackers, who are members of the rebel group Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) that has pledged allegiance to Islamic State.
The assailants attacked Lhubirira Secondary School in the western border town of Mpondwe late on Friday, burning a dormitory and looting food, the police said.
“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,” the police said on Twitter.
They did not say how many of the dead were schoolchildren.
The attackers fled towards Virunga National Park in Congo, the police added.
In the 1990s, the ADF rebels launched their insurgency against President Yoweri Museveni from an initial base in the Rwenzori Mountains.
The group was largely defeated by the Ugandan military but remnants fled across the border into the vast jungles of eastern Congo from whence they have since maintained their insurgency – perpetrating attacks on civilian and military targets in both Congo and Uganda.
In April, the ADF attacked a village in eastern Congo, killing at least 20 people. REUTERS