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Police defuse bomb a day after twin blasts
A soldier stands guard in Lugoba Local Council I in Kawempe Division, Kampala, where a bag containing a bomb was found. Photos/ Micheal Kakumurizi
What you need to know:
The bag containing the bomb was first detected by a 10-year-old girl.
The police bomb squad yesterday defused a bomb which had been placed under a tree in Lugoba Local Council I in Kawempe Division, Kampala.
Residents were on tenterhooks as they waited for the police to detonate the explosive.
A 10-year-old girl, who saw someone put the bag under the tree, told her father about it and he called the police.
“It was in the morning. A man dressed in black clothes and riding a bicycle came and stopped near this tree. He put the bag under the tree and opened it. I asked my brother to inform daddy,” the girl, who sells charcoal, recalled.
The girl’s father had left to run an errand “but when he came back, I told him…[he] returned with a police officer, who was not wearing uniform.”
Ms Ashifah Nakyeyune, a resident of Lugoba Zone, who stays a stone’s throw from where the bomb was placed, said she saw the bag at 9am, adding that the police cordoned off the area an hour later.
The bag was carefully placed.
At 3:30pm, the police’s bomb squad, with the aid of sniffer dogs, established that the object was indeed an explosive.
“We jammed and cooled it in order to control sound and heavy exploding so that it does not cause any harm,” a bomb squad officer told Daily Monitor.
The officer added that after safely detonating the bomb, they collected the bomb samples, soil samples, and parts of the bag. All of these will be submitted to the police forensic team.
The police spokesperson, Mr Fred Enanga, said forensic and counterterrorism experts are poring over different bomb blast sites.
He added that they had “obtained very critical cyber leads and other digital evidence.”
Mr Enanga was optimistic that the worst could be behind Uganda.
“The task teams have finished sweeping all buildings surrounding the blast sites and other vital installations for secondary devices with the assistance of the canine teams,” he revealed.
He added: “No secondary devices were found and the surrounding buildings have been cleared for resumption of activities.”
