A school bus carrying children on a trip in eastern Uganda crashed overnight on Thursday, killing 21 students and five adults and driving a wave of fear and anger among parents desperate to learn the fate of their children.
By Friday morning, hundreds of parents had gathered at the students’ school on the outskirts of the capital, Kampala, demanding answers about what happened to their children, who were all under 12 years old.
“Until we see our children and know their status our minds can’t settle,” said Oromo John, whose 9-year-old nephew attends the school. He was among the family members gathered outside the building of the King David Junior School, where parents wept, leaned on one another for support and raged at the government for failing to enforce road safety standards.
As of Friday afternoon, the authorities had not released the names of the dead, nor announced how many children or adults were injured and in what condition. Many parents turned to WhatsApp groups and TikTok for information.
Uganda’s national police force said in a statement on social media that the driver had lost control of the bus, which then veered off the road, struck a boulder and turned over. Uganda’s acting minister for education, John Chrysostom Muyingo, told parents at the school that the school’s director and four teachers also died.
The government opened an investigation into the crash and suspended all school tours nationwide, he said.
As soon as news of the tragedy began to spread, family members said that some parents began the roughly nine-hour drive to the accident site in Kapchorwa district, to search local hospitals for their loved ones. Others frantically called relatives who lived in the area.
One parent, Augustine Lwanga, said that he had learned through clients who live near the crash site that his child was being treated at a hospital.
“The government should send its police vehicles, military trucks and ambulances to bring our children home,” Mr. Lwanga said. “What are they doing? We pay taxes. What are they for?”
Another parent, Nicholas Ssebuwufu, called on the government to deploy military aircraft and charter planes to transport injured children to Kampala and return the bodies for burial.
Bus crashes at night are frequent in Africa because of poorly maintained vehicles, unsafe driving, and narrow and badly lit roads riddled with potholes.
In Uganda, anger over such accidents can quickly turn against the government, which has been dominated for four decades by President Yoweri Museveni, who won re-election in January.
The minister, Mr. Muyingo, arrived at the school in a convoy with a police escort and met with parents in an attempt to console them.
The government would provide support to families and the school during this “traumatizing period,” he said.
All schools in Uganda are private and the fees are often a major household expenditure. Many parents say they fear that schools may cut costs and maintain lax safety standards to increase profits.
Mr. Muyingo alluded to those concerns, telling parents that some schools did not follow government guidelines for vehicles on school trips.
“Some of these buses are not in proper mechanical condition,” he said.
On the school trip in which the bus crashed, four vehicles — two buses and two minibuses — were carrying 207 pupils in all. The bus that crashed was carrying 107 passengers, Mr. Muyingo said.
The crash was the third involving school buses in Uganda this month. Another bus crash this month killed 14 people on the main highway between Kampala and northern Uganda.
Matthew Mpoke Bigg contributed reporting from London.
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