One person died and several were injured Monday night in a bus explosion near Kampala, Ugandan police said two days after a deadly attack claimed by the Islamic State (IS) group in the capital.
"A team of explosives specialists was dispatched to Lungala, on the Kampala-Masaka highway, after a deadly explosion in a bus belonging to the company Swift Safaris (...) around 5:00 p.m."
(2:00
p.m.
GMT), said in a report. press release Fred Enanga, the spokesperson for the Ugandan police.
Read also Uganda: one dead and seven injured in an explosion, a "terrorist act" according to the Head of State
"Access to the premises was prohibited pending a thorough assessment and investigation by explosives specialists,"
he said.
Fred Enanga initially mentioned two deaths, as did one of the bus company executives, but Ugandan police later clarified that only one person had died.
"Correction: one person has been confirmed dead by explosives specialists,"
the latter said on her Twitter account.
Police did not give more details on the origin of the explosion but Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, who also mentioned a death on Twitter, hinted that it was a bomb.
He said that the police were investigating to determine whether the person killed
"was the one carrying the bomb or not".
"The other 37 passengers are safe as well as the driver,"
he added, still on the social network.
The town of Lungala is located about 35 km west of Kampala, on one of Uganda's busiest roads, connecting the landlocked country with Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
Nails and metal
On Saturday evening, a bomb attack left one dead and several injured in a popular restaurant in Kampala. Police described on Sunday a
"summary"
explosive device
containing nails and pieces of metal, placed in a plastic bag left under a table by the alleged perpetrators. She also described the attack as
"internal terrorism"
. But it was claimed Monday by the Islamic State in Central Africa group (Iscap) which said it had killed two people and injured five, in a statement cited by the SITE Intelligence Group, an organization specializing in monitoring Islamist websites.
IS presents the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a Muslim rebel group that emerged in Uganda but has taken root for nearly 30 years in the DRC, where it is accused of having killed thousands of civilians like its branch in Central Africa . In March, the United States placed the ADF on the list of
“terrorist organizations”
affiliated with ISIS. On October 8, Iscap claimed responsibility for a bomb attack - which had no known casualties - against a police station in Kawempe, near where Saturday's explosion occurred. The United Kingdom and France have since updated their travel advice for Uganda, calling for vigilance in high-traffic areas and public places such as restaurants, bars and hotels.
In August, Uganda claimed to have foiled a suicide bombing targeting the national funeral of a senior army official, Paul Lokech, who had notably led the fight in Somalia against the Islamist rebels Shebab, linked to Al-Qaeda, as the commander of the African Union operation in that country, Amisom.
President Museveni blamed the attempted attack at the funeral on
“ADF terrorists”.
In 2010, two bombings in Kampala targeting supporters attending the FIFA World Cup final left 76 people dead.
They had been claimed by the Shebab, and were seen as reprisals for Uganda's participation in Amisom.
