A missionary couple from the United States and a Ugandan boy were shot dead on Thursday night by gunmen at an evangelical mission college in northwestern Uganda, college officials said on Friday.
Warren and Donna Pett, from the state of Wisconsin, were killed when armed men in military fatigues armed with AK-47 rifles attacked the Here Is Life Mission College in Yumbe district, about 700 km (420 miles) from the capital Kampala.
"Buildings were burned and other property destroyed," William Stough, a senior official at the college ran by the African Inland Mission, told Reuters by mobile phone.
"Warren and Donna were both in their late 40s, and have three grown up children living in America. They taught agriculture and other technical subjects at the school," he said, adding they had been in Yumbe for close to a year.
One student was killed and a second was wounded in the raid.
The dead couple's bodies were flown to Kampala but it was not yet clear when they would be transported back to the United States.
Ugandan army spokesman Major Shaban Bantariza said it was unlikely that any rebels were involved in the attack, but added that investigations were ongoing.
"The information we have is that this was about competition for land, that the evangelical mission wanted to build a church on land that the villagers wanted for other purposes, but this is not yet confirmed," he told Reuters in Kampala.
Yumbe is prone to armed banditry owing to the proliferation of arms in the region which borders the war-ravaged Democratic Republic of Congo and southern Sudan.
Yumbe is far removed from the northern Ugandan town of Lira whose surrounding villages have constantly been subjected to bloody attacks by rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) which is active in the region in its 17-year-old insurgency.