Militants linked to Islamic State reportedly killed at least 41 people and abducted others in an attack on a school in western Uganda, police have said.
“Our forces are pursuing the enemy to rescue those abducted and destroy this group,” defence spokesperson Felix Kulayigye said on Twitter.
Authorities did not say how many people had been abducted by the attackers, members of the rebel group Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) that has pledged allegiance to IS.
The assailants attacked Lhubirira secondary school in the western town of Mpondwe late on Friday, near the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo, police said.
Police did not say how many of the dead were schoolchildren.
The attackers fled towards Virunga national park in the DRC, police added.
The ADF rebels launched their insurgency against President Yoweri Museveni in the 1990s from an initial base in the Rwenzori mountains.
The group was largely defeated by the Ugandan military but remnants fled across the border into the vast jungles of eastern Congo from where they have since maintained their insurgency – perpetrating attacks on civilian and military targets in DRC and Uganda.
In April, the ADF attacked a village in eastern DRC, killing at least 20 people.
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