Prime
Ugandan truck driver shot by Kenya police
What you need to know:
- President Museveni on October 1, reopened Entebbe airport and borders for both tourists and other travelers.
A Ugandan truck driver is nursing bullets wounds after he was shot by a Kenya police officer.
Mr Abdul Rashid Mbingi was shot in the left hand and hip as he resisted arrest by the Kenyan officers at Sofia in the Uganda-Kenya border district of Busia.
Mbingi who is admitted to Tororo hospital told this reporter that at the time he was shot, he had been hired to transport utensils to Sofia village.
"The owner of the utensils told me he was taking them to Shiundu's home but when we reached Sofia, he told me to drop them at the ‘No man’s land,” Mr Mbingi said.
He said as soon as he had dropped the utensils, Kenya officers, some of whom were riding on a motorcycle surrounded him, accusing him of illegal entry.
According to him, the Kenyan police officers demanded that he drives the truck to Busia Kenya police station because he was under arrest.
However, an argument broke out between him and the officers before he tried to driver away.
One of the officers allegedly opened the door of the truck and shot at him twice.
"As I was driving away, the officer opened one of the doors of the truck and shot me first in the hand and then in the hip," Mbingi said.
As soon as he was shot, the person who hired him disappeared.
Mr Paul Kalikwani, the deputy RDC Busia, Uganda confirmed the shooting saying Mbingi was trying to use one of the ungazetted border points to cross to Kenya by the time he was shot.
"He was trying to use the porous border pint to cross into Kenya carrying unspecified goods that is when he was shot," Mr Kalikwani said.
By the time of filing this story, the RDC said the Ugandan authorities, through Interpol, were getting in contact with their Kenyan counterparts, to establish what exactly happened.
He, however, cautioned drivers against trying to use illegal routes to cross the border either from Kenya to Uganda and vice versa.
"It’s illegal to use ungazetted border points yet still, we have the presidential ban on cross border movements in force," the RDC added.
President Museveni on October 1, reopened Entebbe airport and borders for both tourists and other travelers.
He said that emphasis would be put on the travellers presenting certificates of negative test results for Covid-19, which must be done 72 hours before arriving in Uganda.
