Bloomberg July 15, 2010
Somalia's Al-Shabaab Says Attack Start of Retaliatory Campaign
By Hamsa Omar and Fred Ojambo
July 15 (Bloomberg) -- Al-Shabaab, the Somali Islamist group that claimed responsibility for two bomb blasts in Uganda on July 11, said the attack marked the start of a campaign of retaliation, as Uganda’s leader vowed to eliminate the militia.
The bombings, in which 74 people died, were to avenge the killing of civilians by African Union peacekeepers in Somalia, al-Shabaab leader Sheikh Mukhtar Abdirahman Abu-Zubeyr said in an audio recording distributed to the media in Mogadishu late yesterday. Uganda contributed troops to the AU Mission in Somalia, a peacekeeping force known as Amisom.
“Amisom soldiers have carried out the worst massacres in Mogadishu,” Abu-Zubeyr said, citing “indiscriminate” shelling in residential areas and the destruction of civilian homes. “The Kampala bombing is the start of upcoming retaliatory attacks.”
Al-Shabaab, which the U.S. has designated as a terrorist organization with links to al-Qaeda, has been trying to oust Somalia’s Western-backed government since 2007. The militia, along with the rebel Hisb-ul-Islam group, controls most of southern and central Somalia, while the government holds only parts of Mogadishu.
Major Barigye Ba-Hoku, a spokesman for Amisom, wasn’t immediately able to comment on Abu-Zubeyr’s statement when contacted today on his mobile phone.
The attack in Uganda marked the first step al-Shabaab has taken toward becoming a transnational terrorist organization, according to Stratfor, the Austin, Texas-based intelligence group. Two separate venues were targeted in the blasts, which occurred while patrons were watching the soccer World Cup final.
‘Martyr Brigade’
The bombings were carried out by a “martyr brigade” known as Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, Abu-Zubeyr said. Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, who was a suspect in attacks eight years ago on a hotel and an airliner in Kenya, was killed by U.S. special forces in a raid in Somalia on Sept. 15.
Ugandan police said on July 13 that ball bearings found in an unexploded suicide vest in a nightclub in Kampala were similar to fragments found at the bomb sites.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said yesterday he was “extremely angry” about the attacks and vowed to hunt down the perpetrators, according to New Vision, a Kampala-based newspaper.
“We shall eliminate them,” Museveni was quoted as saying. “We are going to go on the offensive and get these terrorists.”
Ugandan police have arrested an unspecified number of unidentified suspects in connection with the attacks, Kale Kayihura, the inspector general of police, told reporters on July 13. He didn’t provide further information.
Rebel Links
Uganda’s security agencies are also probing possible links between al-Shabaab and the rebel Allied Democratic Forces, government spokesman Fred Opolot said yesterday.
The ADF is made up of Ugandan opposition forces and supported by the government of Sudan, according to the website of GlobalSecurity.org, an Alexandria, Virginia-based research company. The group, whose members include “fundamentalist” Tabliq Muslim rebels and parts of the renegade National Army for the Liberation of Uganda, is based in the Ruwenzori Mountains of western Uganda, it said.
The ADF began an insurgency in Uganda in 1996 and was responsible for bomb blasts in Kampala in 1997 and 1998, according to the Ugandan national army.
--Editors: Paul Richardson, Digby Lidstone.
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