By Paschal Norbert
KAMPALA, JUNE 20, 2023 (CISA)- At his first Sunday Angelus since being discharged from the Gemelli Hospital in Rome, Pope Francis offered his prayers to the “young students who were victims of a brutal attack” on a school located in the Uganda District of Kasese.
According to local authorities, about 41 people including 38 students of Lhubiriha Secondary School were killed in a night-time attack by suspected Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) rebel group on Friday, June 16, 2023.
Reports by various media outlets indicate some students were burned beyond recognition, and others were shot or hacked to death after militants armed with guns and machetes attacked the school situated along the Uganda- Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) border.
According to AP, in addition to the 38 students, one guard and two residents of the local community in Mpondwe-Lhubiriha town were also killed in the attack.
A Ugandan military statement said the rebels abducted six students, taken as porters of food looted from the school’s store before escaping across the border into DRC.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni who described the attack as criminal, desperate and futile, on Sunday, June 18, ordered more troops to Kasese to pursue the attackers in their hide-outs across the border and the Rwenzori Mountain.
“We are now sending more troops into the area south of Rwenzori Mountain. Their action, the desperate, cowardly, terrorist action, therefore, will not save them. We are bringing new forces to the Uganda side as we continue the hunting on the Congo side,” said President Museveni in a statement.
Museveni blamed the massacre at Lhubiriha Secondary School on the ADF, an extremist group linked with ISIS, which launched their rebellion against him in the 1990s.
The Friday-night attack has been widely condemned by various international organizations, including the UN, EU and the AU. Moussa Faki Mahamat, the Chairperson of the African Union Commission in a statement dated June 17, called the attack “shocking” while reiterating “ the need for an urgent holistic regional approach to address the threat posed by all terrorist and armed groups operating from the Democratic Republic of Congo, to ensure regional security.”
