Student Julius Isingoma has told how he miraculously survived a night-time assault by suspected Islamist rebels on his school dormitory in western Uganda.
“I smeared the blood of my dead colleagues in my mouth, ears and on my head so that the attackers would think I was dead,” he said, when we met him at Bwera General Hospital in Kasese district.
About 40 people – 37 of them students – died in the attack on the secondary school in the small town of Mpondwe on Friday night.
Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni blamed the attack on the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), adding that they were “possibly working with other criminals because I hear that school had some wrangles”. He did not elaborate, but vowed to hunt down the militants in their hide-outs across the border in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
They came to the boys’ dormitory but the students had locked it after realising they were in danger.
“When they couldn’t open the door they hurled a bomb inside the dormitory and then used hammers and axes to break down the door,” he said.
Julius was standing behind many of the students who had formed a shield near the door and were shot dead when the militants got into the dormitory.
There were cries as the students were gunned down, hacked or shot to death.
He quickly climbed to the top of a bunk bed, removed some of the wooden planks of the ceiling, and jumped inside to hide.
From there, he helplessly watched his colleagues being brutally murdered by the assailants, who then set fire to mattresses and left.
“I was overwhelmed by the smoke and dropped back down into the dormitory with a thud,” he said.
The militants heard the thud and came back.
It was at that point that Julius knew he had to come out of the attack alive.
“I lay next to the bloodied bodies of my friends and thought very fast. Then I smeared a lot of blood into my ears, mouth and on my head and when the militants came, they checked my hand for a pulse and left,” Julius said.
Student Godwin Mumbere managed to run away from the school
Another survivor, Godwin Mumbere, was in the same dormitory as Julius.
The 18-year-old recalled the assailants going to the girls’ dormitory, dragging them out and hacking them to death with machetes.
They then came to the boys’ dormitory, broke down the door and started attacking the students.
The bed Godwin was hiding under was overturned and his friends who were on top fell to the ground and were killed.
But they went out and came back into the dormitory to ensure everyone was dead.
“It was at this point that they shot me in the hand and set the dorm ablaze,” he said.
