KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) — The two tourists killed, along with their tour guide, in an attack near a Ugandan national park were a newlywed couple, the country’s president said in a statement Wednesday.
The honeymooners — a South African woman and a British man — died when unknown assailants set ablaze their tour vehicle along a road by Queen Elizabeth National Park. Their local guide was also killed.
President President Yoweri Museveni described the attack as a “cowardly act on the part of the terrorists attacking innocent civilians and tragic for the couple who were newlyweds and visiting Uganda on their honeymoon.” He said the terrorists “will pay with their own wretched lives.”
Attacks within and around national parks are rare in Uganda, with specialist police units deployed there. Queen Elizabeth National Park, one of the country’s most popular conservation areas, is located in a remote area of southwestern Uganda near the Congo border.
Ugandan police blamed the attack on the Allied Democratic Forces, or ADF, a shadowy rebel outfit with ties to the Islamic State group. Museveni asserted the ADF’s responsibility, urging security agencies to ensure the group “is wiped out.”
Ugandan troops are currently hunting down the ADF deep inside Congo. Ugandan authorities say hundreds of ADF rebels have been killed in airstrikes in recent months.
According to Museveni, ”a small group of terrorists running away from our operations in Congo” attacked the tourist vehicle.
The ADF originated in Uganda but later was forced to flee to eastern Congo, where it is accused of carrying out multiple attacks targeting civilians. The group is not known to claim responsibility for attacks it carries out.
The ADF occasionally conducts cross-border attacks. In one such attack in June, the group was accused of massacring at least 41 people, most of them students, in a raid on a remote Ugandan community near the border.
The ADF has long opposed the rule of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, a U.S. security ally who has held power in the East African country since 1986.
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