‘So many lifeless our bodies’: Militia college assault haunts Ugandan city | Armed Teams

Mpondwe, Uganda – Most nights, Godwin Mumbere and his classmates at Lhubirira Secondary College in Mpondwe on Uganda’s western border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) research and sing quietly earlier than turning off the lights at 10pm and climbing into their bunk beds.

On June 16, that routine was disrupted by an unknown variety of attackers, alleged rebels from the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), who stole over the border from the DRC and set upon the varsity. Inside hours, they’d slaughtered greater than two dozen pupils within the deadliest assault Uganda has skilled in a long time.

Mumbere, 18, remembers that the assailants arrived about half previous 10pm.

They first shot the varsity watchman earlier than demanding the boys open their dormitory door. “All my buddies within the dormitory refused,” Mumbere advised Al Jazeera.

The pinnacle boy instructed them to cover beneath the beds, and Mumbere did as he was advised whereas attackers fired bullets by the home windows and the locked door.

Raiders proceeded to the ladies’ sleeping quarters and killed the scholars there. A number of medical personnel advised Al Jazeera that a lot of the college students had been bludgeoned with hammers and hacked to dying with machetes.

The rebels additionally compelled their method into the boys’ shuttered room, nonetheless firing weapons. One of many bullets hit Mumbere within the hand. He wrapped it in a fabric.

Lastly, the militia set the boys’ dormitory on fireplace. So Mumbere took his probabilities and fled into the night time.

In her home throughout the varsity compound, the headmaster’s spouse, Brenda Masika, 27, heard gunfire and college students crying out for assist. Her husband was away on enterprise, and she or he was alone together with her three youngsters.

A person wearing a inexperienced uniform and carrying a gun entered the home, she mentioned. He took her cellphone and the meals she’d left on the hearth earlier than threatening to kill her too. It was solely when he noticed that she had a child that he allowed the household go earlier than setting the home ablaze.

Within the compound, Masika noticed the watchman’s physique and the wrecked boys’ dorm. She stood weeping because the buildings burned, unable to save lots of something from her house.

After the assault

The rebels kidnapped six college students and looted meals shops. They made their method out of Mpondwe, burning extra homes and killing villagers, earlier than slipping again into DRC.

At 1am, the our bodies started to reach on the mortuary of an area hospital, head administrator Clarence Bwambale defined.

Thirty-seven college students and 5 villagers had been killed, based on an official police report. One other lady died of extreme head accidents a number of days after the raid, bringing the fatalities to 43. The scholar victims ranged in age from 12 to 25.

Seventeen our bodies had been despatched to the close by metropolis of Fort Portal for DNA identification as a result of they had been charred past recognition.

Dad and mom arrived at daybreak on June 17 to establish and declare the our bodies of their youngsters, forming a rush so intense that the hospital needed to shut its gates and permit them into the mortuary in small teams.

The workers tried as finest they might to consolation the grieving households.

“Shedding an individual and dropping a baby to such a ugly dying isn’t one thing simple,” Bwambale advised Al Jazeera. “Crying can also be a part of therapeutic. You enable them to cry and then you definitely console.”

By noon, the mourners started to purchase coffins.

Banage Saleteri, who runs a small carpentry store on the roadside in Mpownde, has offered 17 caskets for the reason that assault, providing them at a reduction in gentle of the tragedy. “My clients got here crying, so the worth was low cost,” he advised Al Jazeera.

It’s the most troublesome interval the coffin maker has confronted, he mentioned. “There have been so many lifeless our bodies,” Saleteri mentioned.

Whispers and questions

As Mpondwe grieved, Uganda’s authorities blamed the assault on the ADF rebels, and in a assertion, President Yoweri Museveni known as their actions “legal, determined, terrorist and futile”.

The ADF was initially shaped in western Uganda in 1995 in opposition to the federal government.  Three years later, its rebels killed 80 college students and kidnapped greater than 100 from Kitchwamba Technical School in an assault much like the one in Mpondwe.

The group ultimately migrated to DRC in 2001, the place it continues to wreak havoc on the civilian inhabitants.

In 2015, ADF chief Jamil Makulu was arrested in Tanzania. His successor, Musa Seka Baluku, then swore fealty to ISIL (ISIS).

Based on the most recent report by United Nations specialists within the DRC, ADF collaborators in Uganda acquired cash transfers of at the very least $60,000 between 2019 and 2020 from an ISIL outlet in Somalia whereas ISIL claimed credit score for ADF crimes dedicated as not too long ago as April.

However the extent of direct communication and collaboration between the ADF and ISIL stays hazy.

Earlier assaults have nonetheless despatched political ripples by the area. Bombings at a pork restaurant in downtown Kampala killed three folks in October 2021, prompting Uganda and the DRC to launch a joint operation to flush the ADF out.

After the assault in Mpondwe, Museveni threatened to “hunt the ADF terrorists into extinction”. Uganda despatched extra troops throughout the border to rescue the scholars. To this point, three have been discovered.

Main Normal Dick Olam, who instructions Uganda’s troops within the DRC, advised journalists that the ADF spent two days on the town, aided by native collaborators, earlier than descending on the varsity. Final week, officers arrested 20 folks, together with the Lhubirira Secondary College headmaster, on suspicion of abetting the rebels.

Residents of Mpondwe whisper that the ADF simply crosses a porous border, typically utilized by smugglers, between Uganda and the DRC. It’s not unusual to see males in uniform on these again roads, that are generally patrolled by Uganda army, or hear pops of gunfire within the night time as troopers pursue petty criminals.

After the assault, a shaken neighborhood known as for extra safety. “We don’t sleep very effectively,” Saleteri mentioned. “We don’t know what’s going to occur.”

Native Muslims, in the meantime, concern retaliation.

“All of us enter the home very early,” mentioned Umar Nadhiru, basic secretary of Nyakahya mosque in Mpondwe. “At night time when you find yourself coming from the prayer, they could even decide you and take you, considering that you’re a mistaken individual.”

A city mourns

Every week later, grief hangs thickly over Mpondwe together with an eerie quiet. Households residing close to Lhubirira Secondary College have vacated the world. Others rush house earlier than darkish.

Among the many mourners is Masereka Loti, 50, whose brother was the slain college watchman. “We may sit and plan for the household,” Loti mentioned. “Now I will likely be alone.”

His nephew Elton was additionally killed by the assailants. One other nephew is lacking. The household has despatched DNA out to be matched, however they have no idea if he’s among the many burned our bodies.

“We’re simply ready,” Loti mentioned.

Three laminated images of their lacking and lifeless relations hold on a peg exterior the household house, strung along with fraying yellow twine.

The gate to Lhubirira Secondary College is closed and guarded by police.

The boys’ dorm smells of smoke and bits of burned clothes are fused to the metallic bunk beds. A couple of private objects litter the ash-strewn flooring.

Messages scrawled by pupils are barely legible on the blackened partitions.

When Al Jazeera met Mumbere on Wednesday, he was nonetheless recovering and wasn’t certain when he’d be launched from hospital. However he desires to return to highschool and proceed his research, to fulfil his dream of turning into an engineer.