Two bombs outside the main Ugandan hotel and a restaurant were detonated before dawn Sunday in the heart of the capital, but a third blast was also caused by a suicide bomber, the Associated Press reported.
Ugandan security forces have announced they have arrested a suspect who has said that there are bombs all over Kampala. However, they have not said how many. They have said they are monitoring bridges and buildings where attackers could hide explosives, the AP reported.
Police have raided several buildings where they found suspicious packages and said they could be explosives, but they have not identified them or said if they found any.
One official told the Associated Press that four people were killed and about four dozen wounded. The official was not authorized to speak publicly about the explosion and so spoke on condition of anonymity.
The most immediate threat is against the public, but it is also the government’s responsibility to provide security against terrorism, the U.S. Embassy in Kampala said in a statement.
“The Ugandan government is actively monitoring the situation and assisting its victims, but this is a difficult case because the attackers appear to have deliberately targeted Kampala, the home of the highest number of Ugandans in the world. The Government of Uganda is determined to stop terrorist groups such as Al Shabab who threaten the world with violence,” the embassy said, referring to the Somalia-based Islamic extremist group that seeks to overthrow Somalia’s government and impose a harsh form of Islamic law.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility, and a spokesman for the Uganda Red Cross told the AP that he believes the attack had more than one person.
The area where the blasts happened — known as “Main Street” — is a major thoroughfare in Kampala and one of the city’s most popular areas.
About 1 million people live in Kampala, and it was the scene of a deadly bombing in 2010 that killed 76 people. The 2010 attack was blamed on Al Shabab. The U.S. State Department last year put Somalia’s Shebab militant group on its list of foreign terrorist organizations.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.