Grief-stricken parents visit mortuary after ISIS killers massacred their children in Uganda school: Militants slaughtered 41 including 38 pupils and kidnapped six others in sickening attack
- 41 people, mostly students, were massacred at Lhubiriha Secondary School
- Read more: ISIS killers slaughter 41 people including 38 pupils in Uganda
Distraught families visited a mortuary after ISIS killers massacred their children in a Uganda school.
Militants slaughtered 41 people – including 38 pupils – and kidnapped six others in a sickening attack at a school near the border of the Democratic Republic of Congo on Friday.
Victims were hacked, shot and burned to death at Lhubiriha Secondary School in Mpondwe, shocking Uganda and drawing condemnation from around the globe.
Horrific photographs show children’s beds burned to ashes, smashed windows and relatives crying over the graves of their loved ones.
The army and police have blamed the Allied Democratic Front (ADF), a militia based in DR Congo, who fled back to the border with six abductees in captivity after the attack.
Distraught families gathered at a mortuary in western Uganda on Sunday for any news of their loved ones after a militant attack left dozens of students dead and others missing
Burned bunk beds and personal items are seen inside the boys dorm at the Lhubirira Secondary School, in Mpondwe, Uganda
Many of the victims were burned beyond recognition when the attackers set a locked dormitory ablaze, frustrating efforts to identify the dead and account for the missing
A general view of the Lhubirira Secondary School following the attack in Mpondwe
Relatives carry a coffin containing a body of a victim of the school attack
The military said it was pursuing the attackers and would recover those kidnapped.
Many of the victims were burned beyond recognition when the attackers set a locked dormitory ablaze, frustrating efforts to identify the dead and account for the missing.
Seventeen male students were burned in their dormitory while 20 female students were hacked to death, said Uganda’s first lady and education minister, Janet Museveni.
READ MORE: ISIS killers slaughter 41 people including 38 pupils who were burned, shot or hacked to death with machetes in sickening attack on school in Uganda
At a mortuary in Bwera, a town near where the attack occurred, families cried as the bodies of their loved ones were put into coffins and taken away for burial.
But for many others, there was no news of missing relatives. Many of those killed in the fire were transferred to the city of Fort Portal where DNA testing can be conducted.
It is the deadliest militant attack in Uganda since 2010, when 76 people were killed in twin bombings in Kampala by the Somalia-based group Al-Shabaab.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called it ‘an appalling act’ while the United States, a close ally of Uganda, and the African Union also sent their condolences and condemned the bloodshed.
A security guard and three members of the public were also killed, officials said.
The army would track down ‘these evil people and they will pay for what they have done’, Museveni said on Saturday.
But questions have been raised about how the attackers managed to evade detection in a border region with a heavily military presence.
The relative of a victim of the Mpondwe Lhubiriha Secondary School mourns as she leans towards a casket outside the Bwera General Hospital Mortuary
The relative of a victim of the Mpondwe Lhubiriha Secondary School mourns outside the Bwera General Hospital Mortuar
Families cry outside a mortuary where bodies of victims of school attack were brought
Cooking equipment is seen burned amongst debris inside the school
The outside of the building has been left severely damaged following the horrific attack
Glass from the school windows lies shattered on the ground after the killings
Many of the victims were burned beyond recognition when the attackers set a locked dormitory ablaze, frustrating efforts to identify the dead and account for the missing
It is the deadliest militant attack in Uganda since 2010, when 76 people were killed in twin bombings in Kampala by the Somalia-based group Al-Shabaab
Major General Dick Olum told AFP that intelligence suggested the presence of the ADF in the area at least two days before the attack, and an investigation would be needed to establish what went wrong.
Uganda and DR Congo launched a joint offensive in 2021 to drive the ADF out of their Congolese strongholds, but the measures have failed to blunt the group’s violence.
In June 1998, 80 students were burnt to death in their dormitories in an ADF attack on Uganda’s Kichwamba Technical Institute near the DR Congo border.
More than 100 students were abducted.
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