(Kampala) Ugandan police said on Thursday they had shot dead five suspects and arrested 21 people as part of the investigation into a recent double suicide bombing claimed by the Islamic State (IS) group that killed four people in Kampala.
Perpetrated by three suicide bombers, the two attacks took place two minutes apart on Tuesday morning, first at a checkpoint near the police headquarters, then near the Parliament, in the business district of the Ugandan capital.
The police attributed these two attacks to a “local group linked to the ADF”, the Allied Democratic Forces, a rebellion born in Uganda and active for 25 years in the east of the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
They have been claimed by the IS, which designates the ADF as its “Central African Province” (Iscap in English). In March, the United States officially declared the ADF affiliated with ISIS.
On Thursday, during a shootout in western Uganda, counterterrorism agents killed “four suspects in Ntoroko, from where they were returning to the Democratic Republic of the Congo,” the door told reporters. -police speech Fred Enanga.
A fifth man, Sheikh Abas Muhamed Kirevu, was killed near the capital while trying to escape arrest, he added, identifying him as a local Muslim leader “responsible for the revival of terrorist cells in Kampala” .
The police also arrested 21 suspects, “operational agents, coordinators and funders of terrorist activities”, continued Mr. Enanga.
Tuesday’s double bombing came three weeks after two other attacks, a bombing of a restaurant in the capital on October 23, claimed by Iscap, and a suicide bombing on a bus near Kampala two days later and not claimed.
The police indicated at the end of October that they had arrested “a number” of suspected ADF members after these attacks, suspecting the group of “preparing a serious attack against important infrastructure”.
The ADF are considered by experts to be the deadliest of the 120 or so armed groups that roam eastern DRC, many of them the product of two regional wars fought a quarter of a century ago.
This rebel group is accused of having killed thousands of civilians in eastern DRC. According to Kristof Titeca, an academic specializing in the group, “it is increasingly clear that the ADF is relocating to Uganda”.
In March, Washington established a link between the ADF and ISIS, which in 2019 began claiming some ADF attacks on social media, presenting the group as its regional arm – “Islamic State in Central Africa,” ISCAP.