June 17 (UPI) -- Dozens of schoolchildren were among those slain by suspected Islamic State-aligned rebels in an attack on a secondary school in western Uganda, officials said Saturday.
Local police in Mpondwe, Uganda, said in a statement that rebels affiliated with the Allied Democratic Forces had entered the country late Friday from their base in the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo and killed 25 schoolchildren at Lhubiriha Secondary School.
The attackers looted the school and set its dormitories on fire, he said, adding the ADF attackers were being pursued into the DRC's Virunga National Park by the Ugandan army.
At the time of the initial press briefing, police said eight other victims were listed in critical condition at a hospital in Bwera, Uganda.
Related
Selevest Mapoze, director of the Mpondwe-Lhubiriha border region, later told the Turkish Anadolu Agency that 41 bodies were ultimately removed from the school, 38 of which were students.
A Ugandan military spokesman said some of the young victims had been hacked to death, the BBC reported.
"There are no words for the shock nor condemnation strong enough to express my horror at the brutal and cowardly terrorist attack by suspected ADF terrorists, which targeted a school in Western Uganda near the border with the DRC," African Union Commission Chairman Moussa Faki Mahamat tweeted.
The U.S. Congress describes the ADF as an "armed group primarily active in the Democratic Republic of Congo." In a report on the organization issued last year it said the group has pledged allegiance to ISIS and poses a threat to long-running efforts by the United States to help stabilize the DRC.
In January the ADF was accused of carrying out the terrorist bombing of a Pentecostal church in the DRC that killed 10 people and injured at least 39 others.
