We did it and Bujumbura is next, claim al Shabaab

Kampala

Somalia’s al Shabaab Islamist group yesterday confirmed it had carried out the two bomb blasts that killed at least 74 people in Kampala and threatened more attacks if the country kept its peacekeeping troops in Somalia. “Al Shabaab was behind the two bomb blast in Uganda,” Sheikh Ali Mohamud Rage, al Shabaab’s spokesman, told reporters in the Somali capital Mogadishu.

“We thank the mujahideens that carried out the attack. We are sending a message to Uganda and Burundi, if they do not take out their AMISOM troops from Somalia, blasts will continue and it will happen in Bujumbura too.”

The claim reaffirms the earlier suspicion by the Inspector General of Police Maj. Gen. Kale Kayihura that the militant group was behind the deadly attacks.

The reports also moved to vindicate government suspicions as told by Mr Fred Opolot, the Media Centre boss, who said the government “suspected this is an act of suicide bombers” and comments by army spokesman Felix Kulayigye who said: “At one of the scenes, investigators identified a severed head of a Somali national, which we suspect could have been a suicide bomber.”

The alshahid, a Somali news agency, also quoted a senior member of the al shabaab saying the blasts were aimed at retaliating Uganda for sending peacekeepers to Somalia to support the Transitional Federal Government of President Sheikh Sherif.

In a BBC interview yesterday evening, the leader of the same group, Mohammed Godane made definite claim that they had attacked Kampala. The al shabaab have been threatening to take the war theatre from Mogadishu to Kampala and Bujumbura after the two countries deployed 5, 000 troops in 2007 as peacekeepers in Mogadishu.

Lt. Col. Kulayigye said the UPDF would take the war to Mogadishu. “Our promise to the people of Uganda will be fulfilled. Whoever brings the war to us, we take it to him,” he said. “We will take the war to the al Shabaab if they have claimed to be responsible for this act,” he said. Lt. Col. Kulayigye said the attacks gives UPDF more resolve to stay in Somalia.