Uganda police killed seven suspects linked to Kampala's suicide bombings

KAMPALA, Uganda

Uganda Police have said that seven suspects were killed and 106 people detained during operations by the security services linked to three suicide bombings in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, last week.

ISIL (ISIS) claimed responsibility for the November 16 attack, which killed seven people, including the three bombers, and injured dozens more. One police officer was among the four others killed and 27 of the 37 wounded were also police officers.

“To disrupt and dismantle acts of domestic terrorism, we have intensified operations. Since these operations began, a total of 106 suspects have been arrested,” police spokesperson Fred Enanga said in a statement posted on Facebook on Monday.

Police did not provide details on how the seven suspects were killed.

In last week’s attack, a suicide bomber blew himself up at the entrance of a police station in the centre of Kampala. Three minutes later two other suicide bombers exploded along a road that leads to the parliament.

The explosions set vehicles alight, sent glass shards flying, and panicked officers and workers fleeing multi-storeyed buildings.

President Yoweri Museveni

Enanga said those detained “included those who were involved in terrorist financing and persons who were involved in mobilisation and incitement of vulnerable Ugandans into the ranks of the ADF [Allied Democratic Forces],” a rebel group.

“We are actively monitoring all spaces in homes, places of worship, which are acting as domains for recruitment and as collection centres, for children who are introduced to ideological messages and beliefs,” Enanga said.

A security raid on a location in central Uganda had found 22 young people who security personnel suspects were being prepared for recruitment into the ADF, he added.

The ADF was founded in Uganda in the 1990s and initially waged a war against the government from bases in the country’s west.

The group was eventually routed and fled into eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo where it has been operating since, with the United Nations blaming it for thousands of civilian deaths. - Reuters