(Bloomberg) --
The Allied Democratic Forces, a militia group aligned with Islamic State, is suspected of killing at least 37 students after raiding a school Friday night near the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo,
The rebels attacked privately-owned Lhubirira Secondary School in western Uganda, about two kilometers (1.2 miles) from the border, torched a dormitory and looted a food store before fleeing back into DRC toward Virunga National Park, Kampala-based police said on Twitter. It said its forces and the army are pursuing the rebels.
“On arrival, the school was found burning with dead bodies of students lying in the compound,” Uganda’s ministry of defense said in a statement. Six students have been abducted and eight hospitalized in critical condition.
The ADF fought in Uganda’s western region in the late 1990s before fleeing to Congo, from where authorities says it has planned terror attacks.
In September 2020, ADF leader Musa Muhsin Baluku said his group had been disbanded and become an autonomous Islamic State province, according to a study published by the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation at King’s College London.
Islamic State, through its self-proclaimed Central African provide, claimed responsibility for a series of attacks in Uganda in 2021, including bombings that left at least seven people dead, prompting the government to embark on a retaliatory campaign later that year.
(Updates with new death toll from first paragraph.)
