Three people have died in deadly twin suicide bomb attacks that targeted key government installations in Kampala.
According to the video footage released by the police on Tuesday, the first suicide bomber carrying a backpack blew himself up at 10: 03 am outside the Central Police Station.
The police spokesperson, Fred Enanga told journalists that a number of police officers were among the 33 people injured in the terrorist attacks.
“The fresh footage on CCTV clearly indicates how a male adult, putting on a black jacket, and carrying a backpack, detonated himself. He died instantly and the spillover effect caused injuries to police officers and other civilians who were within a radius of 30 metres,” he said.
The second bomb went off a few minutes later which was detonated by two suicide bombers riding a motorcycle.
“Two suicide bombers were clearly captured, on motorcycles, disguising as bodaboda riders. They detonated the bombs they were carrying”, Mr Enanga said.
The second bomb went off outside a building that houses the offices of the Inspector General of Government which is next to the parliament and opposite the Justice Ministry.
Mr Enanga warned that “there are other suicide bombers still out there” who might carry out more attacks.
The fourth suspected suicide bomber was shot and injured in a police pursuit in Kawempe, a Kampala suburb.
“We managed to arrest him. We took him to his home in Katooke Nansana where we recovered a suicide jacket and materials used to make bombs,” Mr Enanga said.
Mr Enanga said out of 33 injured people, five are in critical condition. He blamed the Allied Democratic Forces, a terrorist group allied to ISIS for the attack that saw three universities issuing directives stopping students from entering the premises of the universities with backpacks.
In June 2020, the U.S Department of State designated ADF which rebranded itself as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria – Democratic Republic of the Congo (ISIS-DRC) in 2019 as a foreign terrorist organization.
This is the third attack by the ISIS- affiliated terrorist group on Uganda within three weeks. Using its telegram account, ISIS claimed responsibility for attack on a pork restaurant in Kampala on October 24, 2021 which killed a waitress and injured three.
A day after, another bomb was detonated in a bus that was travelling from Kampala to Bushenyi in the western part of the country.
The police said on Tuesday that the terrorist group was assembling the bombs locally. “These kinds of threats remain significant because IEDs[ Improvised Explosive Devices] and suicide bomb jackets can easily be built from common household items found in local markets, retail shops and supermarkets”,
The ADF also known as Madina at Tauheed Wau Mujahedeen, is also responsible for many attacks across North Kivu and Ituri Provinces in eastern DRC.
Under the leadership of Seka Musa Baluku, the ADF has been notorious in this region for its brutal violence against Congolese citizens and regional military forces, with attacks killing over 849 civilians in 2020 alone, according to a United Nations report.
The ADF was previously sanctioned by the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the United Nations under the UN Security Council’s DRC sanctions regime in 2014 for its violence and atrocities.
The U.S. Department of the Treasury also sanctioned six ADF members, including leader Seka Musa Baluku, in 2019 under the Global Magnitsky sanctions program for their roles in serious human rights abuse, with a subsequent United Nations sanctions listing for Baluku in early 2020 under the DRC sanctions program.