Ugandan police on Monday said that 20 people had been arrested for suspected collaboration with the notorious militia group blamed for last week’s grisly attack on a school near the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
“Twenty arrests have been made of suspected collaborators, suspected ADF collaborators,” police spokesman Fred Enanga told a news conference, referring to the Allied Democratic Forces based in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
He said in a separate statement that those arrested included the principal and director of Lhubiriha Secondary School in Mpondwe, that came under attack late on Friday.
Photo: AFP
Enanga said the death toll was now 42, including 37 students. The oldest among the victims so far identified was a 95-year-old woman and the youngest a 12-year-old girl.
Another six people were injured and remain in hospital, he said, while adding that there were conflicting reports on the number abducted by the assailants, ranging between five and seven.
“An attack on innocent children is barbaric, is inhumane and of course constitutes crimes against humanity,” Enanga said.
The youngsters were hacked with machetes, shot and burned to death in their dormitories in horrific killings that have drawn global condemnation.
“As a country, we continue to stand by each other in the fight against terrorism. No matter how heinous the attack or how brutal or inhumane the methods used, the ADF will not be able to succeed in demolishing the solidarity of Ugandans in the fight against terrorism and extremism,” Enanga said.
Grief-stricken Ugandans on Monday were burying more victims, while other families were still desperately hunting for news of their loved ones or facing an agonizing wait for DNA tests on some of the students who were burnt beyond recognition.
The authorities have said 15 people from the community, including five girls, were still missing.
Ugandan authorities are pursuing the assailants who fled back toward the porous border with their abductees.
“Their action — the desperate, cowardly, terrorist action — will not save them,” Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said on Sunday in his first statement on the attack, vowing to hunt the militants “into extinction.”
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