The school that was attacked is located in western Uganda, close to the Democratic Republic of Congo.
In a statement on June 17, Ugandan Defense Ministry spokesman Felix Kulayigye said the army found the bodies of the dead when they arrived at Lhubirira Secondary School in Mpondwe town, according to Reuters. The town is in Western Uganda, near the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
“Our forces are pursuing the enemy to rescue the abductees and eliminate the group,” he said on Twitter earlier. According to Ugandan police, the attackers, who belonged to the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) rebel group, fled towards Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Police said that in addition to those killed or kidnapped, eight others were in hospital with serious injuries after the worst attack in years in the East African nation.
Casualty figures are mixed. Private broadcaster NTV Uganda said on Twitter that the death toll was 41, while state-run newspaper New Vision said the figure was 42. According to New Vision , 39 of the dead were students, including some who were killed when the attackers detonated a bomb as they fled.
Neither Ugandan police nor the military said how many of the dead were students.
According to these forces, the attackers, consisting of about five people, set fire to a dormitory and looted food.
Major General Dick Olum, commander of the western Ugandan army and in charge of the force deployed in the Democratic Republic of Congo, said the attackers arrived in the town of Mpondwe two days before the attack, to identify their targets.
He said an unidentified young man had come to the school to look at the layout before the attack.
“That’s how the attackers came and locked the boys inside. The boys actually tried to fight back, but they were too strong. The attackers set the mattresses on fire,” Olum told reporters from Mpondwe, according to a video posted on Twitter by the Daily Monitor .
ADF rebels launched an insurgency against Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni in the 1990s from their original base in the Rwenzori Mountains.
The group was largely defeated by the Ugandan army, but its remaining members fled across the border, hiding in the vast jungles of eastern DRC. From this base, they maintained their insurgency, launching attacks on civilian and military targets in both DRC and Uganda.
In April, the ADF attacked a village in eastern DR Congo, killing at least 20 people.
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