A gruesome terrorist attack on a boarding school housing secondary (high school) students left at least 42 dead in Kasese district, southwest Uganda, this weekend, 37 of them students, and many of them “burnt beyond recognition.”
The Ugandan government immediately blamed the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), an Islamic State affiliate, for the attack, which occurred on Friday night local time. Eyewitnesses said they heard shouts of “Allahu akbar!” as the terrorists hacked girl students to death and burned the boys alive. Neither the ADF nor the greater Islamic State organization has taken responsibility for the attack, however, and some senior officials have begun speculating publicly that outside forces attempting to seize ownership of the school used the jihadists to create a situation where the current owners, an NGO reportedly under Canadian control, would lose legitimacy as administrators
Kasese is located on the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where the ADF is believed to be headquartered. The governments of the DRC and Uganda launched a joint military operation, “Operation Shujaa,” in late 2021 and extended it last year specifically targeting the ADF, which seeks to overthrow both governments and establish a jihadist “caliphate.” The operation allowed 1,700 Ugandan forces to enter DRC in concert with local soldiers and target ADF hideouts. The DRC government also approved the presence of an American “anti-terrorism” contingent in the country in 2021, shortly after the United States designated the ADF a Foreign Terrorist Organization.
The incident, according to local news reports, began late on Friday at the Lhubiriha Secondary School in Mpondwe when an unknown number of attackers swarmed the male and female dormitories. Eyewitnesses said the girls opened the door to the terrorists and were subsequently hacked to death with machetes. The boys did not, so the terrorists burned them alive inside the building.