"Three people have been arrested and are being questioned in connection with the attack. More details will be released after investigations," said Joe Walusimbi, Commissioner of Kesese District, where the school is located.
Ugandan security forces stand outside the school where the massacre took place. Photo: AFP
Earlier on Monday, relatives buried more victims of the massacre at Lhubiriha High School in Mpondwe, an attack blamed on a notorious rebel group based in the border region with the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Other families are still desperately searching for news of their loved ones or waiting for DNA tests on some of the students burned beyond recognition in the attack last Friday night.
As many as 37 students have been confirmed dead in the massacre. Victims were hacked to death with machetes, shot or burned to death. Local authorities say 15 people, including five girls, are still missing.
Ugandan authorities blamed the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) and pursued the attackers who fled back to the DR Congo border with six abductees.
"Their actions - acts of terror, cowardice, desperation - will not save them," Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said on Sunday in his first statement on the attack, vowing to hunt down the militants "to the end".
It was the deadliest attack in Uganda since twin bombings in Kampala in 2010 that killed 76 people in an attack claimed by the Somalia-based Al-Shabaab group.
The ADF, an armed group with a history of links to mainly Ugandan Muslim rebels fighting President Museveni, has been blamed for the deaths of thousands of civilians in the Democratic Republic of Congo since the 1990s.
UN experts say the Islamic State (IS) group has been providing financial support to the ADF since at least 2019. IS says the ADF is its regional affiliate. In March 2021, the US added the ADF to its list of "terrorist groups" linked to IS.
Hoang Anh (according to AFP)
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