A devastating road accident in eastern Uganda has claimed the lives of at least 20 schoolchildren and one adult supervisor, marking one of the deadliest incidents involving young people in the country in recent memory. The crash took place on Thursday evening in Kapchorwa’s Chekwatit Hill area, as the group of students returned from a educational field trip to the popular Sipi Falls tourist site.
Local law enforcement and government officials confirmed that the vehicle, operated by King David Junior School based in Ndejje, crashed around 20:00 local time (17:00 GMT) in Chekwatit village, Kawowo sub-region. Dozens of other passengers, including additional school staff members, sustained injuries of varying severity in the incident.
Preliminary probe findings point to a combination of mechanical failure and hazardous road conditions as the core causes of the tragedy. Police officials detailed that the bus developed a mechanical fault before the driver lost control on the hilly stretch of road, a location that has been the site of multiple severe crashes in the past. “The driver reportedly lost control of the vehicle, which veered off the road, struck a large stone along the roadside, and overturned,” the Uganda Police Force shared in a public statement.
Rory Balaam Ateenyi Barugahara, Uganda’s Minister of Local Government, who visited the crash site shortly after the incident, confirmed the identities of the fatalities on his social media platform X account. “Sadly, 20 children and 1 adult, who happens to be the founder and director, Mr Tadeo Ssekade, have gone to be with the Lord,” he wrote.
Eyewitness footage shared in the immediate aftermath of the crash shows the bus crumpled and heavily damaged, with local community members rushing to extract trapped passengers and provide first aid to injured children before emergency services arrived.
This fatal crash has reignited long-simmering public concern over road safety and school transportation standards in Uganda, coming just weeks after a string of other serious bus accidents involving civilian and student passengers across the country. Uganda’s national traffic authorities have long documented that the country records thousands of preventable road fatalities annually. Key contributing factors consistently cited include overspeeding, inadequate vehicle maintenance, poorly engineered infrastructure, and unaddressed hazards on high-risk rural road corridors like Chekwatit Hill.