Islamic State claims responsibility for suicide bombing that killed three people in Uganda.
The Islamic State claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing on Tuesday in the Ugandan capital city of Kampala, which killed three people and forced the evacuation of parliament. OkeyNews reported.
In addition to the deaths, the blasts sent 33 people to the hospital, five of whom are in critical condition, a police spokesman told OkeyNews. Of the three killed, two were police officers, OkeyNews reported.
The first attack, which killed the policemen, took place near a police station. The two subsequent attacks took place about three minutes after the first near the parliament building and were carried out by two motorcycle bombers.
“A sound like that of a large gun went off. The ground shook, my ears almost went deaf,” Peter Olupot, a 28-year-old bank guard who works near parliament, told OkeyNews. “I saw a burning vehicle and everyone was running and panicking. I saw a wedding [motorcycle] man, they broke his head. ”
Claiming responsibility through its Amaq news agency, the Islamic State attack follows a similar suicide bombing last month outside a police station.
But caused no more casualties than the attacker. Police intelligence indicated that Tuesday’s attacks were carried out by the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) wing of the Islamic State.
The ADF operates in both Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It has operated since the late 1990s.
However, in 2015 The group split amid an internal power struggle with half the group promising an alliance with the Islamic State. OkeyNews reported that the nicknames of the three attackers indicated that all three were from Uganda.
This flurry of recent attacks represents a major security setback for a country that has spent years cultivating Western security support. The US State Department reported in 2019 that it provides approximately $ 970 million a year to Uganda for development and security assistance.
Dino Mahtani of the International Crisis Group told OkeyNews that ADF had shifted its focus from settling scores with local opponents to controlling local war economies. OkeyNews reported that the group began training its fighters to wear suicide vests in March and has increased its recruitment of volunteers and focused on developing increasingly advanced plans.
“With the most recent affiliation of your main faction to ISIS [Islamic State], several foreigners from all over East Africa with more globalist jihadist agendas have been coming to their camps, “Mahtani told OkeyNews.