(19 Jun 2023)
FOR CLEAN VERSION SEE STORY NUMBER: 4440408
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ASSOCIATED PRESS
Nyabugando, Mpondwe-Kasese – 18 June 2023
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1. Aerial of funeral
HEADLINE : Uganda town buries victims of school attack
2. Various of mourners singing
3. Mourner crying
ANNOTATION : Mourners began burying the victims of a brutal attack by suspected extremists on a school in Uganda.
4. Various of coffin being buried
ANNOTATION: The attack on Lhubiriha Secondary School, near the Congo border left dozens of people dead.
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Bennet Bwambale, relative of attack victims:
"The family we lost two of them who are dead. One is still in the hospital who was beaten by a hammer on the head.”
6. Picture of victim Masika Florence
7. Picture of victim Masereka Zakayo
8. Funeral prayer
ANNOTATION: Some villagers have temporarily moved away from the Mpondwe-Lhubiriha community, fearing more attacks.
9. SOUNDBITE (English) Atkins Godfrey Katusabe, Bukonzo West Member of Parliament, Kasese District:
“People are psychologically crippled and emotionally bleeding. You can see and you have been all over the place, everybody is asking why this community?”
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Nyabugando, Mpondwe-Kasese – 17 June 2023
10. Armored military vehicles
11. Various of mourners at funeral
ANNOTATION : The atmosphere in the area remains tense but calm as Ugandan security forces roamed the streets outside and near the school.
STORYLINE:
A bereaved Ugandan border town on Sunday began burying the victims of a brutal attack on a school by suspected extremist rebels that left 42 people dead, most of them students, as security forces stepped up patrols along the frontier with volatile eastern Congo.
One of eight people wounded in Friday night's attack, in which 38 students were killed, died overnight, said the mayor of the town of Mpondwe-Lhubiriha.
In addition to the 38 students, the victims include a school guard and three civilians. At least two of them, members of the same family, were buried Sunday.
Some students were burned beyond recognition; others were shot or hacked to death after militants armed with guns and machetes attacked Lhubiriha Secondary School, co-ed and privately owned, which is located about 2 kilometers (just over a mile) from the Congo border.
Ugandan authorities believe at least six students were abducted, taken as porters back inside Congo.
Atkins Godfrey Katusabe, a local MP, said people were "psychologically crippled and emotionally bleeding."
The atmosphere in Mpondwe-Lhubiriha was tense but calm on Sunday as Ugandan security forces roamed the streets outside and near the school, which was protected by a police cordon.
The attack is blamed on the Allied Democratic Forces, or ADF, which rarely claims responsibility for attacks. It has established ties with the Islamic State group.
In a statement on Sunday, his first comment on the incident, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni described the attack as “criminal, desperate, terrorist and futile," vowing to deploy more troops on the Ugandan side of the border.
The ADF has been accused of launching many attacks in recent years targeting civilians in remote parts of eastern Congo, including one in March in which 19 people were killed.
The ADF has long opposed the rule of Museveni, a U.S. security ally who has held power in this East African country since 1986.
The group was established in the early 1990s by some Ugandan Muslims, who said they had been sidelined by Museveni’s policies.
AP video shot by Patrick Onen.
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