Following the twin suicide bombings in the capital Kampala on Tuesday that were claimed by the Islamic State terrorist outfit, Ugandan security agencies, including the police and miltary are not just seated.
They have mounted a scathing hunt for the attackers and their allies, leading to substantial progress so far.
Security operatives have so far shot dead six suspects as they tried to flee, officials say.
Police say they believe a domestic group linked to the Allied Democratic Forces, an affiliate of the ISIL (ISIS) group, were behind the attacks.
Counterterrorism officers in the west of the country killed “four suspected terrorists in Ntoroko who were crossing back to DRC”, police spokesman Fred Enanga told a news conference on Thursday.
Another man, an Islamic cleric named Muhammad Kirevu, was also killed in stiff standoff when security forces raided his home outside Kampala, Enanga remarked, adding that Kirevu was a local Islamic leader who was “responsible for reawakening the terror cells in Kampala”.
A second cleric Suleiman Nsubuga is said to be on the run. The two clerics are accused by security to be behind the radicalisation of the youth in Uganda, by encouraging them to join slipper cells to carry out violent attacks.
Police also arrested 21 suspects as part of a crackdown on the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), an armed group active in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo that the United States has linked to ISIL.
The ADF, historically a Ugandan rebel group, has been accused of killing thousands of civilians in the eastern DRC.
Tuesday’s explosions in the capital Kampala occurred within minutes of each other, with two suicide bombers on motorbikes disguised as “boda boda” motorcycle taxi drivers detonating a device near parliament, while a third attacker targeted a checkpoint near the central police station (CPS).
The twin attacks, which killed at least four people and injured more than 30 others, were the latest in a series of attacks on the East African country.
The group has long been opposed to the rule of President Yoweri Museveni, a US security ally who was the first African leader to deploy peacekeepers in Somalia to protect the federal government from the al-Shabab militant group.
Police also cautioned public to be vigilant, warning that terrorists and their allies are believed to be plotting a new attack on major installations.
Through its news agency “Amaq”, ISIS reavealed the attack was a vengeance move, carried out by its ADF affiliate, Islamic State of Central African Republic (ISCAP), intended to make Uganda pay for participating in war against Islamic State fighters in Central Africa.
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