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from: RODNEY MUHUMUZA, Associated Press
Posted: Nov 16, 2021 / 2:44 am CST
Updated: 11/16/2021 / 05:14 AM CST
Security forces and forensic technicians are investigating the location of an explosion on a street near the parliament building in Kampala, Uganda on Tuesday, November 16, 2021 in what is widely believed to be a coordinated attack. (AP Photo / Hajarah Nalwadda)
KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) – Two loud explosions rocked Uganda’s capital Kampala early Tuesday, creating chaos and confusion as people fled widely believed coordinated attacks.
One explosion occurred near a police station and another on a street near the parliament building, witnesses said. The explosion near Parliament appeared to hit a building that housed an insurance company, and the subsequent fire swallowed cars parked outside. According to the national broadcaster UBC, some MPs were seen evacuating areas of the parliament building nearby.
At least 24 people have been hospitalized with injuries sustained in the explosions, Emmanuel Ainebyoona, a health ministry spokesman, said in a Twitter post. Four of them were seriously injured, he said.
An eyewitness video posted online showed a cloud of white smoke rising from the explosion scene near the police station.
The police did not respond immediately and it was not clear whether the explosions were bombing.
People are rushing to leave the city, many on car motorcycles.
Uganda officials have called for vigilance following a series of bomb explosions in recent weeks.
An explosion in a restaurant in the suburbs of Kampala on October 23 killed one person and injured at least seven others.
Another explosion in a passenger bus two days later only killed the suicide bomber, police said.
Even before these attacks, the UK government had updated its Uganda travel advisory to say that extremists “are very likely to attempt to carry out attacks in this East African country”.
The Allied Democratic Forces, an offshoot of the Islamic State Group in Central Africa, claimed responsibility for the attack on the restaurant.
This group has long opposed the rule of longtime President Yoweri Museveni, a US security ally who became the first African leader to deploy peacekeepers in Somalia to protect the federal government from the extremist group al-Shabab. In retaliation for Uganda’s troops in Somalia, the group carried out attacks in 2010 that killed at least 70 people who had gathered in public squares in Kampala to watch a World Cup soccer match.
But the Allied Democratic Forces, with their local roots, gave Museveni more of a headache.
The group was founded in the early 1990s by Ugandan Muslims who said they were sidelined by Museveni’s policies. At that time, the rebel group staged deadly terrorist attacks in Ugandan villages and the capital, including an attack in 1998 in which 80 students were massacred in a border town near the border with the Congo.
A Ugandan military attack later forced the rebels into eastern Congo, where many rebel groups can roam freely because the central government has limited control there.
Reports of an alliance between the Allied Democratic Forces and the Islamic State Group first surfaced in 2019, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks the online activities of extremist organizations.
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