- Police say Ugandan group ADF pledged allegiance to Daesh.
- Eight victims remain in critical condition at Bwera hospital.
- Govt official says number of students were still unaccounted for.
The death toll in the Uganda school attack nearly doubled from the number initially announced by the police, as the local media reported at least 41 casualties on Saturday.
Slightly varying numbers of 41 and 42 deaths in the Daesh-linked attack on school in western Uganda, were reported by privately-owned NTV Uganda television and state-run New Vision newspaper, respectively.
The country’s police had earlier put the toll at 25 while announcing that militants affiliated with Daesh were behind the terrorist attack.
Members of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) — a Ugandan group based in eastern Congo which has pledged allegiance to Daesh — set a dormitory at Lhubirira secondary school in Mpondwe ablaze and robbed the food late on Friday, the police had said.
“So far 25 bodies have been recovered from the school and transferred to Bwera Hospital,” Ugandan police said on Twitter.
However, how many of the dead were schoolchildren was not yet ascertained.
Meanwhile, eight victims had also been recovered, who remain in critical condition at Bwera Hospital, they added.
The police said that soldiers were pursuing the attackers who fled towards Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo, police added.
District Commissioner Joe Walusimbi told AFP that a number of students were still unaccounted for.
A vast expanse on the border with Uganda and Rwanda, Virunga is the oldest nature reserve in Africa and is renowned worldwide as a sanctuary for rare species, including mountain gorillas.
Militias — of which dozens are active in eastern DR Congo — also use the park as a hideout.
Originally insurgents in Uganda, the ADF gained a foothold in eastern DR Congo in the 1990s and have since been accused of killing thousands of civilians.
Since 2019, some ADF attacks in eastern DR Congo have been claimed by Daesh, which describes the fighters as a local offshoot, the militant organisation’s Africa Province wing.
It is not the first attack on a school in Uganda attributed to the militia.
In June 1998, 80 students were burnt to death in their dormitories in an ADF attack on Kichwamba Technical Institute near the border of DR Congo. More than 100 students were abducted.
While in April this year, the ADF attacked a village in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, killing at least 20 people.
Uganda and DR Congo launched a joint offensive in 2021 to drive the ADF out of their Congolese strongholds, but the measures have so far failed to end the group’s attacks.
In March this year, the United States announced a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to the capture of the ADF’s leader.
Additional input from AFP.
