Twenty individuals have been apprehended by Ugandan police on suspicion of collaborating with an ISIS-linked rebel group believed to be responsible for a horrific school massacre in western Uganda, CNN reported.
The attack, carried out by members of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) rebel group, claimed the lives of around 42 people, including 37 students, at the Lhubiriha Secondary School in Mpondwe. The assailants brutally attacked their victims with machetes and set fire to the dormitories, resulting in a devastating loss of life. Additionally, six individuals were abducted during the incident.
On June 19, Fred Enanga, a spokesperson for the Uganda Police Force disclosed that the arrests made were of individuals suspected of collaborating with the ADF, rather than actual members of the rebel group. Authorities had previously revealed that the ADF had likely spent several days planning the attack with the aid of local residents in the town of Kasese, where the school is situated.
The Lhubiriha Secondary School consists of students aged between 13 and 18 and is located near the border of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The youngest victim of the attack was only 12 years old.
As families mourn the loss of their loved ones, preparations are underway to retrieve the bodies from a local morgue for burial, as reported by UBC TV.
Yoweri Museveni, president of Uganda described the attack as “criminal, desperate, terrorist and futile” in his speech. He pledged to deploy additional troops to the western region of the country and along the border with Congo in an effort to pursue the perpetrators.
“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,” Museveni highlighted.
Uganda’s security forces have battled to rein in the ADF, which continues to mastermind deadly attacks both in the country and in the Congo, from the mountainous border between both nations. In January, the group detonated a bomb during a church service in the Congolese province of North Kivu, resulting in the deaths of at least 12 worshipers and leaving around 50 others injured.
In fact, the United States designated the ADF as a terrorist organization in 2021, and the group has been under United Nations sanctions since 2014.
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