2023-06-18 06:53:29
The Uganda Army has increased to 41 the death toll from the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) attack on a schoolof which 37 are students, three are community members and another is the school security guard.
The ADF, created in the 1990s and accused of the massacres of thousands of civilians, was subject to a split in 2019 after its leader will swear allegiance to the jihadist group Islamic State in Central Africa (ISCA), under whose banner it has operated ever since. The United Nations attributes more than 1,200 murders of civilians to them in 2021 alone.
The “terrorist attack” occurred at the Lhubirira school, in the town of Spoonabout two kilometers from the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), said the Police in a statement published on their Twitter social network account.
“A dormitory was burned and a grocery store was looted. So far, they have recovered 25 bodies from the school and have been transferred to the hospital of (the city of) Bwera”, said the forces of order, without specifying how many victims are students.
“Eight victims were also recovered, who remain in critical condition at the hospital in Holy“, he pointed out.
The Police also stated that, together with the Ugandan Army, they began a “intense persecution” of the attackers towards the Congolese Virunga National Park.
“We offer our deepest condolence to the families of those who have been killed, and we offer our prayers and thoughts to those who have been injured. Further details will be provided in due course,” the statement added.
The Allied Democratic Forces are a rebel group of Ugandan origin, but are currently based in the Congolese provinces of North Kivu and the neighbor Iturinear the border that the DRC shares with Uganda.
Your goals are vague beyond a possible link with the Islamic State (IS), which sometimes takes responsibility for its attacks.
Although experts from United Nations Security Council found no evidence of direct IS support for the ADF, the United States identifies them since March 2021 as “a terrorist organization” affiliated with the jihadist group.
According to him Kivu Security Barometer (KST), the ADF is responsible for at least 3,850 deaths in 730 attacks in the Democratic Republic of the Congo since 2017.
In addition, the Ugandan authorities have accused the group of organizing attacks inside its territory, including two suicide bombings in Kampala in November 2021 and assassinations by armed motorists against senior officials.
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To finish off the ADF, the DRC and Ugandan armies began in November 2021 a joint military operation on Congolese soil that is still ongoing, although rebel attacks have not stopped.
Since 1998, eastern DRC has been mired in a conflict fueled by rebel militias and the Army, despite the presence of the UN mission in the DRC (Monusco), with some 16,000 uniformed personnel on the ground.
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