2023-06-24 06:23:00
Julius Isingoma miraculously survived the night attack by suspected Islamist rebels in their school dormitory in Uganda. Here we collect what he and another of the few survivors told the BBC.
More than 40 people, most of them students like him, were killed in the attack. to secondary school in the small town of Mpondwe, in the southwest of the country, last Friday the 16th at night.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni blamed the assault on the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) and added that “they were possibly working with other criminals because I heard the school had some disputes.”
The president gave no further details, but vowed to hunt down the militants in their hideouts across the border in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The ADF has yet to comment on the attack.
The group formed in the 1990s and took up arms against Museveni, citing the persecution of the minority Muslim population.
Getty Images More than 40 people, most of them students, were killed in the attack on the high school.
The ADF leader pledged allegiance to the self-styled Islamic State (IS) in 2016, according to reports.
But it was not until April 2019 that IS first acknowledged its activity in the area, when it claimed responsibility for an attack on army positions near the border with Uganda.
This statement marked the announcement of the so-called “Central African Province” (Iscap) of Islamic State.
Six students are believed to have been abducted as IS militants retreated to the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Julius was one of the six people who managed to survive the attack. which lasted several hours.
He did not identify the attackers, but said they were armed men who launched their assault around 10 p.m. local time.
When they arrived at the student dormitory, the youths had blocked the door after sensing that they were in danger.
“When they couldn’t open the door, they threw a bomb into the bedroom. and then they used hammers and axes to knock it down,” Julius recounted.
The student was standing behind many of his classmates who had formed a shield near the door and were shot dead when the militants entered the dormitory.
Getty Images The funeral of two of the victims in Mpondwe.
There were screams as students were shot or killed with machetes.
Julius quickly climbed on top of a bunk, removed some of the wooden ceiling boards, and jumped inside to hide.
From there, he watched helplessly as his companions were brutally murdered by the assailants, who then set the mattresses on fire and drove off.
“When the smoke overwhelmed me I fell into the bedroom with a thud,” he said.
The militants heard the noise and returned.
It was at that moment that Julius knew he had to survive.
“I lay down next to the bloody bodies of my friends and had to think very fast. Then I smeared a lot of blood on my ears, mouth and head”.
“When the militants arrived they checked my wrist to see if I had a pulse and left,” Julius added.
BBCThe student Godwin Mumbere managed to flee the school after the attack.
Another survivor, Godwin Mumbere, was in the same bedroom as Julius.
The 18-year-old recalled that the assailants they went to the women’s dormitory, dragged them out and murdered them with machetes.
They then reached the boys’ dormitory, broke down the door, and began attacking the students.
The bed Godwin was hiding in tipped over and his friends on top of it fell to the floor to their deaths.
“The attackers saw me but they thought I was dead,” he told the BBC.
After leaving the dormitory, the attackers returned to make sure that everyone was dead.
“It was at that moment that they shot me in the hand and set the bedroom on fire.“he recalled.
Godwin regained consciousness upon hearing the screams of another student who said that he was dying.
It was then that she ran out of the dormitory, scaled the fence surrounding the school, and ran through a cocoa plantation to a nearby hardware store.
He hid under a vehicle until rescued.
Getty ImagesTwo days after the attack, the families buried 21 of the students.
Clarice Bwambare, chief administrator at Bwera General Hospital, told the BBC that they started receiving the bodies of the victims around 01:00, some three hours after the attack began on Friday night.
Bwambare noted that of the 20 bodies they received, 18 were of students.
BBC
Devastated families buried 21 of the students two days after the attackaccording to Uganda’s New Vision newspaper.
Lying in his hospital bed, Julius regretted not being able to attend their funerals.
The student said he wished he had been a soldier to fight back against the assailants and save the lives of his friends and classmates.
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