Rebels with ties to the Islamic State group killed at least 25 people at a school in western Uganda.
After the attack on the Lhubiriha secondary school in Mpondwe, eight more people are still in very bad shape.
Police say that the attack on Friday was made by a Ugandan group based in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) called the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF).
Police said that soldiers are after the group of people who ran away toward Virunga National Park in the DRC.
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Fred Enanga, a spokesman for the national police, said in a statement on Saturday, “So far, 25 bodies have been taken from the school and taken to Bwera Hospital.”
During the attack on Friday night, he said, a building at the school was burned down and a food store was robbed.
The AFP news agency says that some kids have still not been found, and dozens are thought to have been taken.
The attackers have run toward Africa’s oldest and biggest national park, Virunga National Park, which is home to rare species like mountain gorillas.
The large area, which neighbors Uganda and Rwanda, is also used as a hiding place by militias like the ADF.
The school was attacked less than two kilometers (1.25 miles) from Uganda’s border with the DRC. This is the first time in many years that a school in Uganda has been attacked in this way.
In June 1998, when the ADF attacked Kichwamba Technical Institute near the border of DRC, 80 students were burned to death in their dorms. More than a hundred kids were taken.
In the 1990s, the ADF was formed in eastern Uganda. They took up guns against President Yoweri Museveni, who had been in power for a long time, saying that the government was mistreating Muslims.
After the Ugandan army beat it in 2001, it moved to the DRC province of North Kivu.
Since the 1990s, ADF fighters have been running their operations from inside the DRC.
