The Uganda military has rescued three students, who were kidnapped Friday in an attack on a school, along with a woman and two kids who were previously abducted by the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) rebel group, inside the Virunga National Park in neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo, authorities told CNN.
Military spokesman Brigadier Felix Kulayigyesays said “two terrorists” were killed and two guns recovered from them inside the Virunga National Park in neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo,
Around 42 people, including 37 students, some as young as 12, were killed on Friday when members of the ISIS-linked ADF attacked the Lhubirira Secondary School in Mpondwe, hacking some of their victims to death with machetes and setting off fire at the dormitories.
Earlier this week, a Uganda police spokesperson, Fred Enanga, told CNN that 20 suspected ADF collaborators had been arrested, but no actual members of the rebel group.
The arrests followed earlier disclosure by authorities that the ADF may have spent days planning the attack with the help of local residents in town.
On Wednesday, the police said a self-proclaimed member of the militia group had been trailed and arrested after the 25-year-old suspect, Kalenzi Resto, identified by police as a shop attendant, admitted his alleged involvement in the deadly school attack in a video that has been widely shared on social media.
“The investigation into his alleged participation in the attack is currently underway,” the police said in a tweet.
Grieving families began retrieving the bodies of their loved ones from a local morgue this week for burial. Police said 23 bodies have so far been handed over to their relatives.
On Sunday, President Yoweri Museveni announced the deployment of additional Ugandan troops to the western part of the country and across Uganda’s border with the Democratic Republic of Congo to pursue the ADF.
The Lhubirira school is located in the town of Kasese, which sits along Uganda’s border with the Congo, which serves as a hideout for the deadly militia group.