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At least 40 people, mostly students, were killed and eight others were seriously injured after militants linked to the Islamic State terror group attacked a school in Uganda near the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), police said on Saturday.
The attack happened around 11:30 p.m. on Friday night at Lhubiriha High School in Mpondwe, during which a hostel was burnt down and a grocery store ransacked. Police said in a statement that the attack was carried out by the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) - a Ugandan rebel group based in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which is the central African branch of IS.
Police spokesman Fred Enang said the Ugandan People's Defense Forces and police are currently conducting a search operation for the group, which fled to Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo after the attack. The military also deployed aircraft to help track the rebel group.
Enang said many bodies have been taken to Bwera Hospital where a critically injured person is also undergoing treatment. "We offer our deepest condolences to the families of those who were killed and offer our prayers and thoughts to those who were injured," he said,
Meanwhile, Major General Dick Olum of the Ugandan army told media that some of the students had been burned or hacked to death, Others at the school, mostly girls, were kidnapped by the group, he added. Some of the bodies are said to have been badly burned and DNA tests will be required to identify them.
The latest incident comes a week after suspected ADF fighters attacked a village in the Democratic Republic of Congo near the Ugandan border. The attack on the school, which is located less than 2 km from the borders of the Democratic Republic of Congo, is the first in the last 25 years.
In June 1998, 80 students were burned to death in their dormitories in an ADF attack on the Kichwamba Technical Institute near the DRC border. The ADF was formed in eastern Uganda in the 1990s and took up arms against longtime president Yoweri Museveni.