Ugandan police successfully prevented a bomb attack on churches orchestrated by the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) rebel group on Sunday, located approximately 50 kilometers (31 miles) from the capital, Kampala, as confirmed by President Yoweri Museveni.
The ADF manufactured two bombs with the intent to place them in churches in Kibibi and Butambala, as stated by President Museveni on X, formerly Twitter.
However, the devices were reported to the police and subsequently rendered safe, he further added.
The ADF group has declared its allegiance to the Islamic State group.
Earlier on Sunday, President Museveni, aged 79, who has been in power in the country since 1986, announced that Ugandan forces had conducted airstrikes against ADF positions in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo.
“It seems quite a number of terrorists were killed,” the president mentioned on X, without providing further details.
In September, Ugandan police disclosed that they had thwarted yet another bomb plot targeting a cathedral in Kampala. They apprehended a man believed to be attempting to activate an explosive device among the congregation.
In June, ADF militia members carried out an attack in which they killed 42 individuals, including 37 students, in a high school in western Uganda near the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo.
This was among the most lethal assaults in Uganda since the dual attacks in Kampala in 2010, resulting in the deaths of 76 individuals, which was claimed by the Somali-based Islamist group al-Shabaab.
In their most recent report in June, a United Nations expert panel on the Democratic Republic of Congo affirmed that ISIS had been “providing financial backing to the ADF since at least 2019.”
