The death toll in a deadly attack on a school in western Uganda’s Mpondwe town has risen to at least 40, with an unknown number of people abducted, according to the town’s mayor and local media reports.
The victims included the students, one guard and two members of the local community who were killed outside the school, Mpondwe-Lhubiriha Mayor Selevest Mapoze told The Associated Press on Saturday.
Mapoze said that while some of the students suffered fatal burns when the rebels set fire to a dormitory, others were shot or hacked to death with machetes. Police, however, did not expand on the nature of the attack or how the victims died.
Army spokesman Felix Kulayigye placed the death toll at 37. Eight people were injured and six others kidnapped, he said.
Police earlier blamed the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a Ugandan group based in eastern DRC that has pledged allegiance to the ISIL (ISIS) group, for the attack.
They said earlier that 25 bodies were recovered and eight victims, who remained in critical conditions, were transferred to Bwera Hospital.
National police spokesman Fred Enanga said “a dormitory was burnt and food store looted” in the attack on the privately owned school located in the Ugandan district of Kasese, about two kilometres (1.2 miles) from the DRC border.
Enanga said the army and police units were in “hot pursuit” of the attackers who fled in the direction of Virunga National Park over the border into the DRC.
“People there are very afraid and there is a lot of anxiety and people don’t know what is going to happen next,” a newspaper said.
The military confirmed in a statement that Ugandan troops inside the DRC “are pursuing the enemy to rescue those abducted.”
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