Ugandan Police Says Somali Extremists Sneak into Country

Ugandan police on Thursday confirmed that "suicide bombers" trained by Somali extremists had sneaked into the country with the intention of carrying out bomb attacks similar to the July 2010 blasts that killed dozens of people. Ibin Senkumbi, spokesman for Kampala Metropolitan Police told Xinhua in an interview that the terrorists are targeting prominent politicians especially the opposition.
He said the extremists want to use the current opposition protests against government to launch their attacks. "We got intelligence information that these terrorists want to exploit the current situation of misunderstandings between the government and the opposition to cause more confusion because they are aware that if the opposition leadership gets a problem at this moment then there is likely to be some chaos in the country which would definitely fulfill their intentions," he said.
He said that all opposition leaders have been asked to beef up their personal security as the police and other security agencies trail the extremists. State-owned New Vision daily on Thursday quoted a police source as saying that the head of the group, together with his accomplices, is said to have sneaked into the country about a month ago.
They were reportedly trained by Al Shabaab on how to make explosives before sneaking into the country. Al Shabaab is a Somali militant group fighting the Somali Transitional Federal Government in the Somali capital Mogadishu. The outfit launched twin blasts in the capital Kampala on July 11, 2010 killing near 80 people and injuring 80 others to avenge what they said Uganda's deployment of peacekeeping troops in Mogadishu. Uganda and Burundi have over 8,000 peacekeeping troops in Somalia deployed under the African Union Mission in Somalia, known as AMISOM. CRI