‘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) examine 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 college. Inside hours, that they had slaughtered greater than two dozen pupils within the deadliest assault Uganda has skilled in many years.

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

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

The top boy instructed them to cover beneath the beds, and Mumbere did as he was informed 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 informed Al Jazeera that many of the college students have been bludgeoned with hammers and hacked to dying with machetes.

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

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

A person wearing a inexperienced uniform and carrying a gun entered the home, she stated. He took her cellphone and the meals she’d left on the fireplace 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 means 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 a neighborhood hospital, head administrator Clarence Bwambale defined.

Thirty-seven college students and 5 villagers have been killed, based on an official police report. One other girl 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 have been despatched to the close by metropolis of Fort Portal for DNA identification as a result of they have been charred past recognition.

Mother and father arrived at daybreak on June 17 to determine 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 greatest they might to consolation the grieving households.

“Dropping an individual and shedding a baby to such a grotesque dying isn’t one thing simple,” Bwambale informed Al Jazeera. “Crying can also be a part of therapeutic. You enable them to cry and then you definately 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 value was low cost,” he informed Al Jazeera.

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

Whispers and questions

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

The ADF was initially fashioned 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 finally 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).

In keeping with the newest report by United Nations specialists within the DRC, ADF collaborators in Uganda acquired cash transfers of at the least $60,000 between 2019 and 2020 from an ISIL outlet in Somalia whereas ISIL claimed credit score for ADF crimes dedicated as just lately 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. Thus far, three have been discovered.

Main Basic Dick Olam, who instructions Uganda’s troops within the DRC, informed journalists that the ADF spent two days on the town, aided by native collaborators, earlier than descending on the college. 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 typically patrolled by Uganda navy, or hear pops of gunfire within the night time as troopers pursue petty criminals.

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

Native Muslims, in the meantime, worry retaliation.

“All of us enter the home very early,” stated Umar Nadhiru, normal secretary of Nyakahya mosque in Mpondwe. “At night time when you’re coming from the prayer, they might even choose you and take you, considering that you’re a improper 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 might sit and plan for the household,” Loti stated. “Now I can 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 stated.

Three laminated pictures of their lacking and lifeless family members dangle on a peg outdoors 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 gadgets 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 positive when he’d be launched from hospital. However he desires to return to highschool and proceed his research, to fulfil his dream of changing into an engineer.