UGANDA: Gunmen kill 17 people in an attack on three police stations and a military barracks in western Uganda

Record ID: 355862

  • Title: UGANDA: Gunmen kill 17 people in an attack on three police stations and a military barracks in western Uganda
  • Date: 7th July 2014
  • Summary: ***EDITORS PLEASE NOTE: THIS EDIT CONTAINS GRAPHIC IMAGES*** BUNDIBUGYO, UGANDA (JULY 6, 2014) (REUTERS) CROWD GATHERED AT THE SITE OF THE KILLINGS
  • Embargoed: 22nd July 2014 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Uganda
  • Country: Uganda
  • Topics: Crime,General,Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVACKTOHOWR3AMR31JGWQLQG8D69
  • Story Text: Gunmen killed 17 people when they attacked three police stations and a military barracks in western Uganda, in an area that was once the scene of an insurgency by Islamist rebels, the military said on Sunday (July 6). Among the dead were three police officers and five soldiers.
    A total of 41 of the attackers were killed while another 12 were captured during the raids on Saturday evening (July 5), a spokesman for the Uganda People's Defence Forces said.
    Bundigunyo resident commissioner, Pius Mujuzi has said that the police had been informed of suspicious activities in the lead up to the attack.
    "Of recent days we have been getting reports of people moving in groups of five to seven in the villages wielding pangas and knives and some local arms. We have been investigating and before we go to the root of the matter, these people decided to attack." said Mujuzi.
    Mujuzi added that the attackers attempted to rob a bank but were stopped by security officers.
    "Stanbic bank, they attacked it I think they wanted money but three of them were killed and the other ones ran away. Unfortunately our O.C. station was killed, but he was not killed at the police station, he was on his way to investigate the matter," Mujuzi said.
    The gunmen, from a local militia, had no connection to the Islamist rebel group ADF-NALU, which preyed on the local population in the late 1990s and early 2000s before it was defeated and forced to flee into the jungles of neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo.
    Uganda worries that ADF-NALU, if left unchallenged in Congo's loosely governed east, poses a threat to its oil fields in the Albertine rift basin where Tullow Oil, Total and China's CNOOC are preparing for commercial production.
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