UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres “unequivocally” condemns the jihadist attack on a high school in western Uganda that left at least 42 people dead, one of his representatives said today.

“Those responsible for this heinous act must be brought to justice,” said Farhan Haq. Guterres is also calling for the “immediate” release of people kidnapped by the Islamist militia, the spokesman added.

France, for its part, condemned “in the strongest possible terms the heinous attack” against this high school, and the US State Department’s African Affairs office expressed “dismay”.

At least 42 people, most of them schoolchildren, were killed and eight others were seriously injured in a Friday-Saturday overnight attack on a high school in western Uganda, the country’s worst such attack in years, according to a new count.

A regional government official told dpa that 15 children were also kidnapped. Other sources state that the abductees are six.

According to military and police officials, the attackers are members of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), an Islamist militia that has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group.

After the bloody attack on the school located in the Kasese district, near the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo, the attackers fled to the Virunga National Park, on Congolese territory, taking the people they kidnapped with them.

According to Sylvester Mapozzi, the mayor of Bodue-Lubiricha, where the attack took place, thirty-nine students were killed at the Lubrichia high school. Also, the attackers “killed two people, a man and a woman, bringing the death toll to 41.” He said many of the victims were burned beyond recognition while other students were still missing.

It is the deadliest attack in Uganda since a twin attack in Kampala in 2010 in which 76 people died during a raid claimed by the Somalia-based Islamist group Shebab.

According to a police report obtained by AFP, police and army units were alerted to a “major attack” at the Lubiriha High School in Mpontue at around 23.00 local time (and Greek time) on Friday night.

Upon arrival, they found “the school on fire and the bodies of students lying on the grounds” of the school, according to the report.

The school is less than two kilometers from the border with DR Congo, where the ADF has been accused of killing thousands of civilians since the 1990s.