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“We hope that investigations can begin in earnest so that the perpetrators of this crime face justice,” Bobi Wine, a musician-turned-opposition-leader, said on Twitter.
On Saturday afternoon, photos and video shared on social media and television channels showed a heavy military presence in the area as aid workers responded to the scene of the attack. General Kulayigye, the military spokesman, said the chief of the country’s defense forces and the commander of the land forces were expected to visit the area.
Maj. Gen. Dick Olum, the commander of Uganda’s military operation in Congo, said at a meeting with residents that rebel members had spent two nights in the town before attacking the school. He said that some of the students had been burned or hacked to death, and that government pathologists would carry out DNA tests to identify the charred bodies.
The government has deployed planes to search for those who were abducted, he added. He also called on the town’s residents to remain vigilant and report anything suspicious.
The fact that this attack happened, he said, “is a very shameful thing.”
The Allied Democratic Forces was established in eastern Congo in 1995 by two groups opposed to Mr. Museveni, one of them an Islamist sect. The group also received regional backing from leaders in other countries, including Sudan and Congo, who sought to undermine Mr. Museveni’s rule.
In 1998, rebels affiliated with the group attacked a college in western Uganda, killing 80 students and kidnapping 100 others. But beginning in 2011, major offensives carried out by the Ugandans, the Congolese and United Nations peacekeeping forces undermined the group, prompting it to retreat deeper into the mountainous Ruwenzori region that borders Uganda and Congo.
The group’s former leader, Jamil Mukulu, was also captured in Tanzania in 2015 and then extradited to Uganda.
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