The militants arrived at the private boarding school campus just before midnight, when the students were going to bed, on a cloudy night in a small town in the lush fields of western Uganda.
First, they shot the school guard in the head before reaching the student dormitory. According to witnesses, government officials and security personnel, when they were unable to enter the boys’ locked compound, they threw petrol bombs inside, igniting the mattress and igniting the flames that quickly engulfed them. building. Petrified, the girls unlock their dorm doors and attempt to flee, only to have their attackers catch up with them and machete them to death.
When it’s all over, Friday night attack in Mpondwea town near Uganda’s border with the Democratic Republic of Congo, killing 37 of the school’s 63 students, according to Janet Museveni, the country’s first lady and minister of education and sports.
Military officials said the assailants, members of a Muslim militant group, also burned the school’s library, robbed a grocery store and kidnapped six students, whom they used to carry supplies. robbed. As they fled the town into the dense forests of Congo, they killed three others, including a woman in her 60s – bringing the death toll to 41.
“The community is devastated and feels very bad,” said Mumbere Jackson, who was attending the burial of several students Sunday afternoon in the nearby town of Kajwenge. “Many are asking: Where are the security forces? How did these people come here and commit this atrocity?”
The invasion of Mpondwe Lhubiriha High School was Uganda’s deadliest act of terrorism in years, raising fears of rising rebel activity in an area with a history of transnational insurgency disruptive border.
The brutal attack has highlighted the continued scope and strength of the Allied Democratic Forces, an insurgent group that has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State and the United States has designated a terrorist group.
Richard Moncrieff, Great Lakes regional project manager at the International Crisis Group, said: “Hacking a school can be part of a recruiting desire, but also has the shocking value of attracting a jihadist audience. broader group of people”.
Friday’s attack, he added, “shows that despite nearly two years of focused joint activity against the group, it still has considerable capabilities.”
It also highlights the security challenges facing Uganda, even as the country’s longtime president, Yoweri Museveni, deploys troops in conflicts across Africa and receive billions of dollars in military and development assistance from Western countries, including the United States.
Formed in 1995 to oppose Mr. Museveni’s rule, the Allied Democratic Forces carried out numerous attacks across Uganda, including one on a university in 1998. murdered 80 students. The Allied Democratic Forces also communities attacked across eastern Congoa verdant, mineral-rich region that has been ravaged by decades of atrocities perpetrated by dozens of armed groups.
At the end of 2021, this group caused an explosion in the Ugandan capital Kampala, killing 3 people. That attack caused President Museveni to launch a joint military operation with the Congo in an attempt to drive the group out of their camps in eastern Congo. However, the group continues to recruit new soldiers to join the fight, some of them children, and launch bloody attacks, such as the one in March. killed 36 people in a village in the North Kivu province of eastern Congo.
Observers have criticized the Ugandan and Congolese governments’ military approach to the region, saying that to bring about a lasting solution, the government needs to focus on state building and providing economic opportunities. better economy.
“The attack shows the need for a broader strategy than a purely military one,” Moncrieff said.
Museveni, the education minister, said the Mpondwe Lhubiriha Junior High School was built by an NGO led by a Canadian citizen named Peter Hunt.
She did not name the agency, but research and a local resident both indicate it is the Partnership for Opportunity Development, a nonprofit organization that works with local communities across Europe. Africa through projects including beekeeping, sewing and gardening projects.
On its website, which was operational but shut down after Museveni’s speech, the foundation said the secondary school in Mpondwe was built over a period of four and a half months starting in October. 2010 by a group of Ugandans and Canadian volunteers. The school mainly serves students from the surrounding areas, who are charged low fees and are provided with textbooks and computers through grants.
Ms. Museveni said that the auditors sent by the aid group to survey the school’s finances had left on Thursday, the day before the attack. She added that there had been conflict between the school building aid group and local groups in the county that wanted to take administrative control.
Multiple attempts to reach the school administration and the aid group were not immediately successful.
For now, the town of Mpondwe continues to reel from the tragedy. As officials descended on the town on Saturday, security officers urged residents to remain calm and vowed to bring the perpetrators to justice. Major General Dick Olum, the commander of Uganda’s military operation in the Congo, said at a news conference that they were still searching for six students who were kidnapped and had engaged several militants late on Saturday.
Selevest Mapoze, the mayor of Mpondwe, said many residents in the poor farming community had fled the town fearing another attack. Others, he said, are camped out at a morgue to wait for the bodies of their loved ones or take DNA tests to determine their identities.
“We’re trying to convince them to come back because we’re dealing with security,” he said in a phone interview. “But it is difficult. Heavy mood. A heavy silence fell over the town.”
