Uganda: Opposition Calls For Repatriation Of Troops After School Massacre
Channel: Alkebu-lan Africa
Date: 2023-06-22

Uganda's opposition called on Wednesday for the repatriation of Ugandan troops deployed abroad to reinforce security after a massacre last week at a high school blamed on jihadists left at least 42 people dead.

Among the victims, mostly students, the youngest was 12 and the oldest 95. They were killed on Friday night in Mpondwe (west), a few kilometers from the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), with machetes, shot or burnt alive.

Immediately after the massacre, Ugandan army and police officials incriminated members of the ADF, the Allied Democratic Forces, an Islamist militia that has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group.

On Wednesday, Abdallah Kiwanuka, an opposition official and minister in a shadow cabinet in charge of internal affairs, said that Uganda's decision to deploy troops abroad, notably in Somalia as part of an African Union force to combat the radical Islamist Shebab, had "exceeded" the country's security capabilities and "given the ADF the opportunity to carry out attacks".