Calm returns to Ugandan town after deadly school attack
KAMPALA, June 18 (Xinhua) --
Calm has returned to Mpondwe town in Uganda's southwestern district of Kasese, where the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) rebels killed 41 people, most of them students, a government official said Sunday.
"There is no problem on the ground. We are normal and calm. There is nothing to worry about," Joe Walusimbi, resident commissioner for Kasese district, told Xinhua by phone.
"The military is leading the operations to hunt down these attackers and rescue the students," Walusimbi added.
Ugandan security forces blamed the ADF rebels for attacking Lhubirira Secondary School on Friday night. So far, 37 students, a security guard and three members of the local community have been killed in the attack. Furthermore, eight students were injured and six are suspected to have been abducted by the rebels.
The military said Saturday in a statement that it had deployed both aerial and ground forces to pursue the attackers who could be retreating to Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
The ADF, which is a branch of the Islamic State in Central Africa, is a Ugandan rebel group that is holed up in the jungles of eastern DRC. The rebel group is blamed for causing havoc in villages in eastern DRC.
The Ugandan military and their Congolese counterparts launched joint operations against the rebel group in November 2021 shortly after the ADF launched bomb attacks in Kampala, the capital of Uganda.
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