‘So many dead bodies’: Militia school attack haunts Ugandan town

Mpondwe, Uganda – Most evenings, Godwin Mumbere and his classmates at Lhubirira Secondary School in Mpondwe on Uganda’s western border with the Democratic Republic of Congo study and sing softly before turning off the lights at 10pm and crawling into their bunk beds.

On June 16, that routine was disrupted by an unknown number of assailants, alleged Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) rebels, who stole the DRC border and raided the school. Within hours, they slaughtered more than two dozen students in the deadliest attack Uganda has seen in decades.

Mumbere, 18, recalls that the attackers arrived around 11:30 am.

They first shot the school warden before demanding that the boys open their dormitory door. “All my friends in the dorm refused,” Mumbere told Al Jazeera.

The head boy instructed them to hide under the beds, and Mumbere did as he was told as attackers fired bullets through the windows and the locked door.

Raiders made their way to the girls’ sleeping quarters and killed the students there. Several medical workers told Al Jazeera that most of the students had been clubbed with hammers and hacked to death with machetes.

The rebels also forced their way into the boys’ shuttered room, still carrying weapons. One of the bullets hit Mumbere in the hand. He wrapped it in a cloth.

Finally, the militia set fire to the boys’ dormitory. So Mumbere took his chance and fled into the night.

In her home across the school grounds, the principal’s wife, Brenda Masika, 27, heard gunshots and students screaming for help. Her husband was on a business trip and she was alone with her three children.

A man dressed in a green uniform and carrying a gun entered the house, she said. He grabbed her phone and the food she left on the fire before threatening to kill her too. It wasn’t until he saw she had a baby that he let the family go before setting fire to the house.

In the yard, Masika saw the body of the watchman and the destroyed dormitory of the boys. She stood weeping as the buildings burned, unable to save anything from her home.

After the attack

The rebels kidnapped six students and looted food stores. They made their way out of Mpondwe, burning more houses and killing villagers, before slipping back into the DRC.

At 1 a.m., the bodies began to arrive at the morgue of a local hospital, chief clerk Clarence Bwambale explained.

According to an official police report, 37 students and five villagers were killed. Another woman died of severe head injuries several days after the raid, bringing the death toll to 43. The student victims ranged in age from 12 to 25 years old.

Seventeen bodies were sent to the nearby town of Fort Portal for DNA identification because they were charred beyond recognition.

Parents arrived at dawn on June 17 to identify and claim their children’s bodies. They formed such an intense stampede that the hospital had to close the gates and let them into the morgue in small groups.

The staff tried as best they could to comfort the grieving families.

“Losing a person and losing a child to such a horrific death is not an easy thing,” Bwambale told Al Jazeera. “Crying is also part of healing. You make them cry and then you comfort.”

By noon, the mourners began to buy coffins.

Banage Saleteri, who runs a small roadside carpentry workshop in Mpownde, has sold 17 crates since the attack and is offering them at a discount in light of the tragedy. “My customers came crying, so the price was cheap,” he told Al Jazeera.

It is the most difficult period the box maker has experienced, he said. “There were so many dead bodies,” Saleteri said.

Whispers and questions

As Mpondwe mourned, Ugandan authorities blamed the ADF rebels rackPresident Yoweri Museveni called their actions “criminal, desperate, terrorist and senseless”.

The ADF was originally founded in western Uganda in 1995 as an opposition to the government. Three years later, the rebels killed 80 students and kidnapped more than 100 from Kitchwamba Technical College in an attack similar to the one in Mpondwe.

The group eventually migrated to the DRC in 2001, where they continue to wreak havoc on the civilian population.

In 2015, ADF leader Jamil Makulu was arrested in Tanzania. His predecessor, Musa Seka Baluku, then swore allegiance to ISIL (ISIS).

According to the latest report by United Nations experts in the DRC, ADF operatives in Uganda received remittances of at least $60,000 from an ISIL branch in Somalia between 2019 and 2020, while ISIL took credit for ADF crimes committed as late as April were committed.

But the degree of direct communication and cooperation between the ADF and ISIL remains hazy.

Nevertheless, previous attacks have caused political unrest in the region. Bombings at a pork restaurant in central Kampala killed three people in October 2021, prompting Uganda and the DRC to launch a joint operation to flush out the ADF.

After the attack in Mpondwe, Museveni threatened to “drive the ADF terrorists to extinction”. Uganda sent more troops across the border to rescue the students. Three have now been found.

Major General Dick Olam, who commands Ugandan forces in the DRC, told journalists that the ADF spent two days in the town, aided by local collaborators, before descending on the school. Last week, officials arrested 20 people, including the director of Lhubirira Secondary School, on suspicion of complicity with the rebels.

Mpondwe residents whisper that the ADF easily crosses a porous border, often used by smugglers, between Uganda and the DRC. It is not unusual to see men in uniform on these back roads, which are sometimes patrolled by Ugandan military personnel, or to hear gunshots at night as soldiers chase petty criminals.

After the attack, a shocked community called for more protection. “We don’t sleep very well,” Saleteri said. “We don’t know what’s going to happen.”

Local Muslims, meanwhile, fear reprisals.

“We all enter the house very early,” said Umar Nadhiru, general secretary of Nyakahya Mosque in Mpondwe. “If you come out of prayer at night, they may even pick you and take you away, thinking you are the wrong person.”

A city mourns

A week later, a thick layer of sadness hangs over Mpondwe, along with an eerie silence. Families living near Lhubirira Secondary School have left the area. Others hurry home before dark.

Among the mourners is Masereka Loti, 50, whose brother was the slain school guard. “We can sit down and make plans for the family,” Loti said. “Now I will be alone.”

His cousin Elton was also killed by the attackers. Another cousin is missing. The family sent DNA to match, but they don’t know if he is among the burned bodies.

“We’re just waiting,” Loti said.

Three laminated photos of their missing and deceased relatives hang from a hook outside the family home, strung together with fraying yellow string.

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

The boys’ dormitory smells of smoke and bits of burnt clothing have fused into the metal bunk beds. A few personal items lie on the ash-strewn floor.

Messages scribbled by students are barely legible on the blackened walls.

When Al Jazeera met Mumbere on Wednesday, he was still recovering and unsure when he would be released from the hospital. But he wants to go back to school and continue his studies to fulfill his dream of becoming an engineer.