Several homes have been deserted by residents in the villages neighbouring Lhubiriha Secondary School in Karambi sub county, Kasese District where ADF rebels killed students and abducted others Friday last week.
The residents have deserted their homes in fear of more attacks by the rebel group, local authorities said.
Mpondwe-Lhubiriha mayor, Selevest Mapoze said Sunday evening that the residents have temporarily moved to other districts of Uganda away from the border with Congo.
Mpondwe-Lhubiriha is only 2Km away from the porous border, with multiple footpaths not monitored by authorities.
Many parts of eastern Congo are lawless, allowing groups like the ADF to operate because the central government in Kinshasa, the capital, has limited authority there.
But attacks by the ADF on the Ugandan side of the border are rare because of the presence of an alpine brigade of Ugandan troops deployed to the region since 2021.
The forces are there under a military operation to hunt down the ADF militants and stop them from attacking civilians across the border.
The deployment of Ugandan troops inside Congo followed attacks in which at least four civilians were killed when suicide bombers believed to be members of the ADF detonated their explosives at two locations in Kampala, the capital, in November 2021.
One attack happened near the Parliament building and the second near a busy police station.
Ugandan security forces have not given a detailed account of how the rebels, active in eastern Congo, were able to carry out the attack.
Sunday evening President Museveni issued a statement in which he asks the security forces in Kasese several unanswered questions including how and where they were as the ADF made the attack.
The Allied Democratic Forces, or ADF, rarely claims responsibility for attacks. It has established ties with the Islamic State group.
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 group was established in the early 1990s by some Ugandan Muslims, who said they had been sidelined by President Museveni´s policies. At the time, the rebels staged deadly attacks in Ugandan villages as well as in the capital, including a 1998 attack in which 80 students were massacred in a town not far from Friday’s raid.
The attack followed the same playbook: violence against students. The attackers targeted two dormitories, using extreme force when the boys resisted, according to Ugandan officials.
Students have been attacked because schools are considered soft targets, pupils are sometimes recruited into rebels ranks or used to carry food and supplies for insurgents, and such raids provide media coverage coveted by extremists.
The raid appears to have taken Ugandan authorities by surprise, and first responders arrived after the attackers had left.
