UK issues Uganda terror alert

DAILY MONITOR

October 15 2021

The United Kingdom has warned that terrorists could carry out an attack in Uganda, but police say there is no need to elevate the threat levels.

In a statement on Thursday, the UK government called on their nationals to be extremely vigilant about their security “especially in crowded and public places like hotels, transport hubs, restaurants and bars, and during major gatherings like sporting or religious events”.

“Attacks could be indiscriminate, including in places visited by foreigners. UK Counter Terrorism Policing has information and advice on staying safe abroad and what to do in the event of a terrorist attack,” the statement reads.

Uganda Police spokesman Fred Enanga confirmed the presence of sleeper cells in the country, adding that efforts to dismantle them are ongoing.

“Despite the emerging sleeper cells our terror alert levels are not elevated yet,” Mr Enanga said.

Although the UK did not mention which terrorist group is behind the threat, Uganda security agencies recently accused the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) rebels of attempting to carry out terror attacks.

The Ugandan ADF militia has operated in the restive eastern Democratic Republic of Congo since 1996.

Last week, security agents shot dead a suspected ADF rebel, Hamid Nsubuga, 25, alias Young Midu, in Kampala. He was allegedly planning to assassinate a local politician.

Police said the deceased and another, currently under detention, first attempted to bomb mourners at the burial of former Deputy Inspector General of Police, Lt Gen Paul Lokech, in Pader District, in August.

The UK terror alert could negatively affect Uganda’s tourism sector, which has already been battered by the Covid-19-induced lockdown and other restrictions since 2020.

At least 35,000 tourists from the UK visit Uganda every year. Uganda’s annual tourist arrivals had been increasing to more than 1.5 million before the coronavirus pandemic.

2010 bombings
On July 11, 2010, al-Shabaab terrorists set off two bombs at Kyadondo Rugby Club and the Ethiopia Village Restaurant in Kabalagala, Kampala, killing at least 70 people and injuring dozens.

Since then, security agencies have been issuing terror alert warnings nearly twice every year.

Other than assassinations of politicians and sheikhs, no major attack has been carried out in Uganda since then.

Chaos and tears of Komamboga bomb blast

OCTOBER 25 2021

Daily Monitor

First, it was an explosion: boom! Then confusion followed the din. Was it a gunshot, a tyre burst, a bomb blast or other explosive? What was later established to be shrapnel and nails flew in all directions.

Then there was a short silence — a tense calm for that matter. And in rapid succession, shrills and wails echoed with urgency. Blood began gushing from the injured.

Emily Nyinaneza, a 20-year-old waitress, who was picking money from a couple, lay flattened and motionless, according to witness Ann Tumwine. Moments later, she was pronounced dead.

Whereas some of the revellers instinctively pinned themselves to the ground, in military parlance took cover, many sprinted away, screaming in horror.

It was a bomb blast, said Mr Emmanuel Sserunjogi, the mayor of Kawempe Division where the attack happened, without explaining whether it was his own assumption or based on briefing by security and intelligence agencies.

The blast lifted up dust, which caked some of the survivors. Pieces of the plastic table under which the explosive was planted, alongside broken plastic chairs, littered the premises of Uncle Sam’s and Ronnie’s pork joints.

The sight of fleeing bar patrons, a couple of hours after the 7pm curfew, spread panic. Some onlookers sprinted away, before regathering when it became clearer an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) had gone off.

The pain of the cries for help pierced even the most hardened of hearts and steely of minds.
One witness, who declined to identify herself, said she saw a woman’s breast slashed off by shrapnel. Another was cut to the navel. While the blast amputated a hand of a third female reveller.

It was chaos and tears of a blast, later classified by police as an “act of domestic terrorism”.
Many of the revellers fled not just because of the dreadful bang, but they feared possible arrest for violating the Covid standard operating procedures and drinking at officially-closed bars.

Drivers speeding on Waliggo Road, which runs astride the attacked bars, had to apply instant brakes and hoot to avoid knocking the escapees.

Some of the bar patrons fled to their cars while others sprinted away on foot, abandoning their vehicles altogether, according to Ms Damalie Ngobi, who lives near the scene of the incident.

By some accounts, some of the injured who could speak, afraid of being followed by police, begged to be taken to private medical facilities of their choices rather than to Mulago National Referral Hospital.

As such by midday yesterday, police had only managed to trace four of possible eight victims; two admitted to Mulago, one to Paragon Hospital and another to a clinic near the blast scene in Komamboga, in Kawempe Division.
Whereas frightened revellers sought to escape from police, the blast at a bar, which by presidential directive should have been closed as a means to stem spread of coronavirus, left law enforcement exposed and on trial, according to a verdict by Ms Betty Nakawesa, the Kawempe Division councillor.

Early reports suggested the explosion happened at Digida, instead of the premises of the shop-cum-bar Uncle Sam’s and Ronnie’s Pork joints, because Digida is more popular as pioneer of pork-selling business in the area.

After volunteers rushed the injured to hospitals, police and other security operatives flooded the area, taping off the bars and chasing onlookers.

The lower ranks could be seen slinging AK-47 rifles while their supervisors holstered pistols. They used patrol vehicles to block roads and yellow taped off the area within roughly a 50-metre cicumference.

Unrelenting residents and passersby regrouped and massed at the sentries to be greeted by enforcement officers waving them away.

By 11pm, shell-shocked that a suspected terrorist could strike in a city neighbourhood they call their own without the attraction of expats, frightened and heart-broken residents lazily lurched home, consumed by the debate why a terrorist would target a pork joint.

Deadly blast in Kampala a ‘terrorist act’ – Museveni

OCTOBER 24 2021

Daily Monitor

President Yoweri Museveni said Sunday that an explosion in the capital Kampala that killed one person and injured five was “a terrorist act” and vowed to hunt down those responsible.

Police said a “serious blast” occurred at around 9 pm (1800 GMT) on Saturday at a grilled pork joint in Komamboga, a northern Kampala suburb popular with roadside diners.

Museveni said he had been briefed that three people left a plastic shopping bag at the scene that later exploded, killing one person and injuring five others.

“It seems to be a terrorist act but we shall get the perpetrators,” Museveni said in a Twitter post on Sunday.

He said investigators were still combing the bomb site and more details would be released later, including advice for the public about “dealing with these possible terrorists”.

“The public should not fear, we shall defeat this criminality like we have defeated all the other criminality committed by the pigs who don’t respect life,” Museveni said.

The blast occurred about two hours after the start of a nationwide dusk-to-dawn coronavirus curfew.

Security forces rushed to the scene, which was cordoned off as the bomb squad picked through the site.

Terror warnings

On October 8, the Islamic State group claimed its first attack in Uganda, a bomb attack against a police post in the Kawempe area, near where Saturday’s explosion occurred.

In a statement issued through its communication channels, the group claimed a unit from its Central Africa operation had detonated an improvised explosive device that resulted in injuries and damage to police infrastructure.

No explosion or any injuries were reported by authorities or local media at the time, though police later confirmed a minor incident had occurred without providing further details.

However in the following days, both the UK and France updated their travel advice for Uganda, urging vigilance in crowded areas and public places like restaurants, bars and hotels.

“Terrorists are very likely to try to carry out attacks in Uganda. Attacks could be indiscriminate, including in places visited by foreigners,” stated the updated advice from the UK.

In 2010, twin bombings in Kampala targeting fans watching the World Cup final left 76 people dead.

Somalia’s Al-Shabaab militant group claimed responsibility for the blasts at a restaurant and at a rugby club.

The attack, the first outside Somalia by the insurgents, was seen as revenge for Uganda sending troops to the war-torn country as part of an African Union mission to confront Al-Shabaab.

Inside the Komamboga terror attack

OCTOBER 25 2021

Daily Monitor

The explosion at a Kampala hangout on Saturday night in which one person died and three were injured was “an act of domestic terrorism”, police ruled yesterday.

The improvised explosive device or IED was detonated at Uncle Sam’s and Ronnie’s Pork joints at about 9pm, killing waitress Emily Nyinaneza, 20, and injuring scores.

Annet Kiconco and Peter Ssenyonga — reported by investigators to be in critical condition at Mulago National Referral Hospital – and Rose Nakitto were caught by flying shrapnel and nails.

The attack came two weeks after the United Kingdom and France issued a travel advisory principally for their citizens about a “very likely” terror attack in Uganda, an alert Uganda Police Force downplayed.

Since yesterday evening, joint security teams have been combing a radius of two kilometres from the scene of crime to find the three suspects, but none had been arrested, police said.

Investigators indicate that three male suspects abandoned an improvised explosive device under a table where they briefly sat, before it exploded at a hangout owned by Samuel Lule.

It remains unclear what other work, if any, Mr Lule does or whether he has relatives in high government or security circles to provide a cover for his bar to operate past curfew time and despite a presidential ban.

Nature of explosives
Mr Fred Enanga, the police spokesperson, told a press conference at police headquarters in Naguru, that the IED had bicycle hub bearings, nails, metallic pieces and explosives, suggesting it was home-made.
“Moments after, the explosion occurred, covering a radius of five square metres. This indicates that the suspects ultimately detonated the improvised explosive device after leaving the scene,” Mr Enanga said.

Witnesses said the suspects appeared to be jovial and interacted with, and bought drinks for, other merrymakers before they left the IED near a wall and marched away to set off the blast.

This is the first officially-confirmed terror attack in Uganda after the 2010 twin-bombing at Kyadondo Rugby Club and Ethiopian Village in which more than 70 people died. The al-Shabaab, which Ugandan military dislodged from Mogadishu, then claimed responsibility.

In Kampala, Police Counter-Terrorism (CT) experts determined that the suspects’ execution of the attack in Komamboga was rushed, suggesting they were cowardly and amateurish.

Mr Enanga said no terror group has claimed responsibility and they have not yet got evidence linking the attack to actors.

However, the Counter-Terrorism and National Security Intelligence (CTNSIS), an online terrorist attack tracker, tweeted that “ISCAP (Islamic State Central Africa Province) DR-Congo cell in Uganda has conducted a second terror attack in Kawempe area of the capital Kampala. Two people killed and seven injured. ISCAP has a larger cell in Kasese near the border with DR Congo.”

The figures in the tweet, attributed to ISCAP, of which the Uganda-born, but DRC-based Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) is an affiliate, vary from the fatality and casualty figures presented by police.

The ADF is a Uganda-born rebel group that in the 1990s and 2000s terrorised mainly western Uganda border areas in Kasese, Bundibugyo and Kabarole before starting a campaign of indiscriminate killings in Kampala by tossing grenades in mainly crowded bars.

Their signature brutality manifested on June 8, 1998 when the marauding rebels struck at Kichwamba Technical Institute in Kabarole District, burning dead 80 students and abducting about 100. In a major offensive, the UPDF dislodged the bandits from their lairs in the mountainous frontier and they fled to eastern DR Congo from where, under Jamil Mukulu, they continued to unleash mayhem, this time on rural Congolese citizens.

Rebel groups
Sporadic onslaughts by Congolese forces and a brief lightning air raid by UPDF in December 2017 scattered and subdued the rebels, only for them, according to security and intelligence officials, to regroup under Mukulu, born David Steven.

Tanzanian forces arrested Mukulu in April 2015 and handed him to Uganda where he is being prosecuted for a plethora of capital offences, among them terrorism and murders.

However, Musa Seka Baluku succeeded him, pledging allegiance to the terrorist Islamic State (IS) outfit in 2016, although the transnational terrorist group confirmed its operations in the Uganda border area only in April 2019.
From then on, the United States, according to information on the Department of State website, and other global security and spy agencies, alternately refer to ADF as the Islamic State Central Africa Province (ISCAP) and or Medina at Tauheed Wau Mujahedeen.

In Kampala, police had by yesterday not linked the explosion at the premises of Uncle Sam’s and Ronnie’s Pork joints in Komamboga, a northern suburb of the capital, to any group.

The Force’s spokesperson, Mr Enanga said positioning the IED close to a wall reduced the devastation.
Mr Enanga said they will use descriptions offered by witnesses to identify and arrest the masterminds.

The premises of the attack teems with about a dozen small pork joints and none has a security protocol such as physical checks or Closed-Circuit Television (CCTV) cameras or controlled access.

The only available CCTV cameras that could have caught a footage of fleeing attackers is about a kilometre away, yet there are many intersecting roads they could have used as escape routes.

Police CCTV camera analysts spent the better part of yesterday visiting homes and businesses along the road that have CCTV cameras in an attempt to retrieve footages to aid the investigations that has drawn experts from across the state security and intelligence spectrum.

The attack happened a fortnight after London and Paris warned of a “very likely” terror attack in Uganda, and security officials in Kampala were in corner of bother after they disregarded the alert.

Additionally, the blast happened at a bar, which under a subsisting presidential directive should have been closed to stem the spread of Covid-19, raising questions why the hangouts reportedly patronised by some security operatives were open illegally and past the 7pm curfew in place.

Both President Museveni and the Ministry of Health have issued a 7pm to 6am curfew and closures of bars and discotheques, with a penalty of trading licence revocation for proprietors in breach of the guidelines.

After the Saturday night “domestic terror” incident, police commanders of the neighbouring divisions — Kampala Metropolitan Police North and Kampala Metropolitan Police East — denied that the area was in under jurisdiction.

But Kampala Metropolitan Police Commander Stephen Tanui ruled that it was under Kawempe Division in Kampala Metropolitan Police North and subsequently ordered the arrest of the Operations Commander as well as Officer in-charge of Kanyanya Police Station. Their crime: disobeying lawful orders and allowing the entertainment places to operate in violation of curfew guidelines.

Mr Noah Mukasa Sserumaga, the chairperson for Komamboga Central Village, told Mr Tanui that whenever local police officers attempt to close businesses that violate curfew, they are called by senior commanders to abort the operation.

“Police officers hear are told that there are orders from above to stop enforcing the standards,” he said.
Detectives yesterday struggled to get witnesses, fearful that they could be arrested for merrymaking at a bar in breach of a presidential directive.

IS claims responsibility for deadly Kampala bombing

OCTOBER 25 2021

Daily Monitor

The Islamic State (IS) group on Monday claimed responsibility for a deadly bombing at a restaurant in Uganda at the weekend that police called an ‘act of domestic terrorism’.

Investigators said a 20-year-old woman was killed and three others injured in a blast at a popular roadside eatery in northern Kampala on Saturday evening.

Police said the crude bomb left underneath a table indicated the work of an unsophisticated local outfit, and played down any connection to foreign networks.

However in a message sent via its communication channels, the Islamic State’s Central Africa Province said it carried out the attack, and claimed it killed two people and injured five.

“A security detachment from the soldiers of the Caliphate was able to detonate an explosive device inside a tavern in which elements and spies for the Crusader Ugandan army were gathered,” read part of the statement quoted by the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors militant communications.

On October 8, IS claimed its first attack in Uganda, alleging a unit from the same Central Africa operation bombed a police post in Kampala that resulted in injuries.

No explosion or any injuries were reported by authorities or local media at the time, though police later confirmed a minor incident had occurred without providing further details.

In 2010, twin bombings in Kampala targeting fans watching the World Cup final left 76 people dead.

Somalia’s Al-Shabaab militant group claimed responsibility for the blasts at a restaurant and at a rugby club.

The attack, the first outside Somalia by Al-Shabaab, was seen as revenge for Uganda sending troops to the war-torn country as part of an African Union mission to confront the insurgents.

President Yoweri Museveni on Sunday vowed that those responsible for the latest attack would be caught and expressed condolences to those killed and injured.

Two confirmed dead in another explosion on passenger bus

OCTOBER 25 2021

Daily Monitor

Police said Monday that two people had been confirmed dead and several others injured in an explosion reported on a bus in Mpigi District in central Uganda.
By the time of filing this story, a team of bomb experts had been dispatched to Lungala, along the Kampala-Masaka highway, where the deadly explosion occurred on the bus belonging to Swift Safaris Bus company under registration number UAU 989T, at around 5pm.

“The bus was traveling from Kampala to Bushenyi. So far two people have been confirmed dead and several other victims including injured persons being evacuated from the scene. The explosion comes three days after the bomb attack in Komamboga. The scene has been cordoned off pending a thorough assessment and investigation by the bomb experts. We shall periodically give updates surrounding the incident,” police spokesperson, CP Fred Enanga said in a Monday statement.

Photos and videos shared on social media showed a man’s head leaning against a shuttered window, with reports indicating that he was one of the victims of the explosion.
The bus explosion happened just hours after the Islamic State (IS) group on Monday claimed responsibility for a deadly weekend bombing at a pork joint in Komamboga, a northern suburb of the capital, Kampala that police called an ‘act of domestic terrorism.’

Investigators said a 20-year-old woman was killed and three others injured in a blast at a popular roadside eatery in northern Kampala on Saturday evening.
Police said the crude bomb left underneath a table indicated the work of an unsophisticated local outfit, and played down any connection to foreign networks.
However in a message sent via its communication channels, the Islamic State’s Central Africa Province said it carried out the attack, and claimed it killed two people and injured five.

The acting greater Bushenyi regional police commander, Mr Adrian Kwetegyereza is one of the people who were injured in the bus explosion in Mpigi District

On October 8, IS claimed its first attack in Uganda, alleging a unit from the same Central Africa operation bombed a police post in Kampala that resulted in injuries.

No explosion or any injuries were reported by authorities or local media at the time, though police later confirmed a minor incident had occurred without providing further details.

However, in the following days, both Britain and France updated their travel advice, saying terrorists were “very likely to try and carry out attacks in Uganda” and urging vigilance in crowded areas.
In 2010, twin bombings in Kampala targeting fans watching the World Cup final left 76 people dead.
Somalia’s Al-Shabaab militant group claimed responsibility for the blasts at a restaurant and at a rugby club.

The attack, the first outside Somalia by Al-Shabaab, was seen as revenge for Uganda sending troops to the war-torn country as part of an African Union mission to confront the insurgents.
President Yoweri Museveni on Sunday vowed that those responsible for the latest attack would be caught and expressed condolences to those killed and injured.

Ugandan police blame ADF group for bus blast

By AFP
26 October 2021

Ugandan police said a blast on a bus Monday evening that injured several people was a suicide bombing carried out by a jihadist from the ADF group, which was also suspected of plotting to attack “major installations.”

“The incident was confirmed as… (a) suicide bomb attack, where the attacker died in the explosion,” police spokesman Fred Enanga said on Tuesday.

The 23-year-old bomber was “on the wanted list of members” of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), he said.

The much-feared ADF, historically a Ugandan rebel group, has been accused of killing thousands of civilians in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). In March the United States officially linked the ADF to the Islamic State group.

The explosion on the long-distance bus near the Ugandan capital Kampala followed a bombing at a cafe on Saturday evening that killed one person and injured three others.

Enanga said they had established “a high connectivity” between the two attacks.

“There are individuals or groups of individuals preparing these IEDs who (belong to) the same group of attackers,” Enanga said, referring to improvised explosive devices.

Enanga said police had arrested a number of ADF operatives in the country, who were suspected of hatching “a plot to carry out a major incident on major installations.”

“We strongly believe the attackers are part of the sleeper cells in the country, inspired by ADF in close collaboration with the Islamic State,” Enanga said in a statement following a press conference.

‘Easy to defeat’
Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni tweeted Tuesday that the suicide bomber was part of the same group responsible for a foiled attack on the state funeral in August of Paul Lokech, an army commander who had led a major African Union offensive against Al-Shabaab militants in Somalia.

“We shall get all of them. The present shallow effort is easy to defeat,” he said on Twitter.

The ADF is considered by experts to be the bloodiest of more than 120 armed groups that roam eastern DRC, many of them a legacy of two regional wars a quarter-century ago.

The DRC’s Catholic Church says the ADF has killed around 6,000 civilians since 2013, while a respected monitor, the Kivu Security Tracker (KST), blames it for more than 1,200 deaths in the Beni area alone since 2017.

On March 11, the US State Department said the ADF were linked to the Islamic State under the name of “ISIS-DRC” or “Madina at Tauheed Wau Mujahedeen.” It named the group’s leader as Seka Musa Baluku.

Police called Saturday’s attack an “act of domestic terror” and the Islamic State later claimed responsibility for that bombing.

Investigators said a 20-year-old woman was killed and three others injured in the explosion at a popular roadside eatery.

The police said Saturday’s blast was caused by an explosive device containing nails and pieces of metal, covered by a plastic bag.

They said the crude bomb left underneath a table indicated the work of an unsophisticated local outfit, and played down any connection to foreign networks.

How Ugandans exposed themselves to terrorists as police dropped their guard

October 31, 2021

Nation Media Group

On October 20, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta announced the end of curfew in the country, ending the nationwide limitation on movement at night, instituted in March 2020 at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. “It is now time to shift our focus from survival to co-existing with the disease,” he said in a televised address to mark Mashujaa Day.

In neighbouring Uganda, this was received with excitement and the video of Kenyatta’s speech was circulated widely on social media, even as Uganda maintained a 7pm to 5am curfew.

Perhaps in anticipation of a similar “gift” from President Yoweri Museveni in a week’s time, Ugandans took to bars with reckless abandon. Three days later, a bomb exploded in a Kampala suburb, Kawempe, killing a 20-year-old waitress and injuring other people.

The last time such an attack happened in Kampala was on July 11, 2010, when crowds watching a screening of the 2010 Fifa World Cup final at two locations in Kampala were bombed. The attacks left 74 dead and 85 injured. Al-Shabaab, the Somalia-based militia, claimed responsibility.

President Museveni blamed the latest attack on the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) a rag-tag rebel group that fought the army in the late 1990s in western Uganda, but retreated to the restive DR Congo when it was flushed out of Uganda. Security sources have recently pinned the group on killings of high-profile individuals in the country such as Muslim clerics, police spokesperson Andrew Felix Kaweesi and the recent attempt on the life of Works minister and former Chief of Defence Forces Gen Katumba Wamala.

Imminent attack
The Director-General of Internal Security Organisation, Col Charles Oluka, while visiting the Eastern Africa Fusion and Liaison Unit in Entebbe on Tuesday, said they were narrowing investigations to ADF. He said 47 bomb attacks have been thwarted in recent years. The Liaison Centre coordinates intelligence from 10 cooperating countries, including Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Somalia, and Ethiopia.

Despite warnings from France and Britain about an imminent attack, security agencies did not seem alarmed. Police spokesperson Fred Enanga said they were always ready for any attack. As had been the norm, checkpoints at entrances, despite being manned by security personnel, were taking only temperatures and spraying out sanitisers to prevent Covid-19 infection. Those manning bus parks no longer conduct body searches.

President Museveni, a few years ago, after the shooting of former senior police officer Muhammed Kirumira, ordered registration of SIM cards, fingerprinting of guns in security agencies and private hands, installation of security cameras, use of drones and recruitment of local defence units, and more recently, trackers on all vehicles. Efforts were made on some of these measures, but little was achieved in fighting crime.

Tension in Kampala after twin explosions

Tuesday, November 16, 2021

Nation Media Group

Tension and panic gripped Kampala Tuesday after suspected double bomb blasts went off in Uganda’s capital.

Multiple casualties are feared although authorities had not yet reported the exact number by press time.

Many severely or even fatally injured people were seen on the ground, some in a pool of blood- receiving treatment as police and Red Cross officials mounted rescue operations.

“I saw more than 15 injured people and I saw more than two bodies with my own eyes,” an eyewitness told Ntv Uganda.

Reporters on scene said they saw some human flesh and remains scattered around the area.

At the Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) hospital, many ambulances queued waiting to off-load victims of the attack.

Mulago National Referral Hospital emergency unit is already flooded with about 27 injured people, seven of these in critical condition, according to the hospital management.

At Uganda’s parliament, security launched a swift evacuation of staff and legislators in at the time of the blast.

Thick and dark smoke billowed in the air as cars burnt away on the streets amidst shattered glasses of buildings with hundreds fleeing the city areas.

The massive explosions were heard in a radius of over 700m from the blast scenes along the Parliamentary Avenue and City Square, a popular convergence point.

Security has already cordoned off the scene and dismissed journalists from the area.

Uganda has recently been under a wave of deadly domestic terror attacks with the Islamic State linked- Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) insurgents claiming some.

In 2010, Uganda suffered a twin bombing that killed at least 74 people after Al Shabab terrorists blew up revellers during a World Cup final match.

Triple suicide bombers in Uganda capital kill three civilians, wound dozens

November 16, 2021

Reuters

KAMPALA (Reuters) – Three suicide bombers in the heart of Uganda’s capital killed at least three civilians and sent parliamentarians rushing for cover as nearby cars burst into flames, witnesses and police said, the latest in a string of bombings over the past month.

At least 33 people were being treated at Mulago Hospital, including five people in critical condition, police spokesperson Fred Enanga said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility. The al Qaeda-linked Somali insurgent group al Shabaab has carried out deadly attacks in Uganda. Last month another group, the Islamic State-aligned Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), claimed its first attack in Uganda.

“Our intelligence also indicates that these are domestic terror groups that are linked to ADF,” said Enanga.

The explosions – the first near the central police station and the second very close to parliament – sent bloodied office workers scrambling for cover over shards of broken glass as a plume of white smoke rose above the downtown area.

A single suicide bomber carried out the first blast near the checkpoint at the police station, which killed two people, Enanga said. Then two suicide bombers on motorbikes detonated, killing one other person.

“A booming sound like that from a big gun went off. The ground shook, my ears nearly went deaf,” Peter Olupot, a 28-year-old bank guard who was near the attack near parliament, told Reuters.

“I saw a vehicle on fire and everyone was running and panicking. I saw a boda boda (motorcycle) man – his head was smashed and covered in blood.”

A Reuters journalist saw burned cars behind a police cordon at the scene and a reporter with local television station NTV Uganda said he saw two bodies in the street.

Irene Nakasiita, spokesperson at the Uganda Red Cross, said they would release information about the blasts later.

Ugandan soldiers are fighting al Shabaab in Somalia as part of an U.N.-backed African Union peacekeeping force. Al Shabaab’s bombings in Uganda include a 2010 attack that killed 70 people watching the World Cup.

Last month, the ADF made its first claim of responsibility for a blast in Uganda with a bomb – packed with shrapnel – that killed a waitress at a restaurant.

Also last month, Ugandan police said a suicide bomber had blown up a bus, killing himself and injuring others. His affiliation was unclear.

The ADF was originally established by Ugandan Muslims but now have their main bases in the forested mountains of the Democratic Republic of Congo, which borders Uganda.

Both the ADF and al Shabaab frequently use explosive devices and have been accused of killing thousands of civilians.