The Ugandan army has said that the death toll in an attack by an ISIS-linked extremist group on a school in the west of the country has risen to 37.

According to the French news agency AFP, the spokesman of the Ugandan People’s Defense Forces, Felix Kolejaye, said in a statement on Saturday that “unfortunately, 37 bodies have been recovered and have been taken to the Biora Hospital mortuary.”

The army says it is pursuing militants after the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) attacked a school late on Friday night in a district across the border near Congo.

Earlier, National Police spokesperson Fred Ananga said that ‘a hostel was burnt down and a food store was looted. The condition of eight injured is critical and they have been shifted to hospital.

“Several students are still missing and it has been confirmed that all the dead were students of the school,” said the Resident Commissioner of Kasese.

Police are yet to say what kind of attack it was and how the deaths took place.

The school is about a mile and a half from the Congolese border, where the ADF is active and has been accused of killing thousands of civilians since the 1990s.

The ADF is a Ugandan Muslim rebel group that entered Congo in the 1990s.

ISIS, which it describes as its local branch, has claimed responsibility for attacks by the ADF in eastern Congo since 2019.

ADF has not carried out many attacks in Uganda, but Friday’s attack by the group is believed to be the worst in years.

This is not the first attack on the school by the ADF. Earlier in June 1998, he attacked a school near the Congolese border, killing 80 students.