KAMPALA – Uganda’s police have arrested 48 suspects in connection with last month’s deadly bombings blamed on an Islamist group linked to Islamic State, police said on Monday.
An explosion at a restaurant in the capital on Oct. 23 killed one person and left at least three people injured, while a suicide bomber in a bus two days later injured a senior police officer.
Securities agencies have “conducted several intelligence led operations, that led to the arrest of 48 suspects, highly linked to the acts of terror in the country”, police said in a statement.
The detained suspects involved “single individuals, those operating in small cells that have been broken and others on various activities of terrorism”.
Security personnel have blamed the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), an Islamic group allied with Islamic State, for both attacks. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the restaurant bombing and no group has claimed the bus attack.
Originally a local rebel group, the ADF has operated in the dense forests in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo across the border with Uganda for more than three decades. The group began killing civilians in large numbers in 2014.
It has publicly aligned itself with the Islamic State and Ugandan officials have blamed the group for a gun attack on a minister in June and a series of killings of officials that have included Muslim leaders and police officials.
(Reporting by Elias Biryabarema; Editing by Duncan Miriri and Alison Williams)