Uganda bombing: suicide vest shows extent of plot

Police in Uganda have found an unexploded 'suicide vest' in a suburb of the capital Kampala a day after two similar devices were detonated, killing at least 74 people, many of them watching the World Cup final on TV.

They believe the vest is connected to the other two explosions because, like them, it contained ball bearings designed to injure victims on detonation.

Fred Opolot, a spokesman for the Ugandan government, told the press several arrests had now been made of "foreign" suspects in the bombing. Earlier it was said a severed head with a Somali appearance had been found at the scene of one bombing; a Somali Islamist group has claimed responsibility for the blasts.

The vest was found in a black laptop bag in a nightclub yesterday afternoon. Uganda's inspector general of police, Kale Kaihura, said: "What we found here is consistent with what we found at both crime scenes. And so this is a very significant lead in our investigation."

The attacks took place on Sunday, one at an Ethiopian restaurant and the other at a rugby club. Opolot has said that at least 60 of the dead – the majority – were Ugandan nationals. The nationalities of the rest have not been confirmed, although at least one is thought to have been a US aid worker.

Yesterday, a spokesman for an Islamist group operating in Mogadishu, al-Shabab, claimed responsibility. Sheikh Ali Mohamud Rage said: "Al-Shabab was behind the two bomb blasts in Uganda."

"We warned Uganda not to deploy troops to Somalia, they ignored us," he added. "We warned them to stop massacring our people, and they ignored that. The explosions in Kampala were only a minor message to them. We will target them everywhere if Uganda does not withdraw from our land."

Ugandan troops make up the bulk of the 'Amisom' peacekeeping force presently in Mogadishu forming probably the only obstacle to al-Shabab gaining full control of the city. They support the country's UN-backed nominal government, to which al-Shabab is implacably opposed.

Also part of the peacekeeping force are troops from Uganda's African Union partner, Burundi - and Rage specifically threatened an attack on that country next if troops were not withdrawn.

The attacks were clearly timed to grab as much publicity as possible, with the eyes of the world on Africa for the World Cup. The competitively hard-line militias in Mogadishu declared football haram (un-Islamic) before the World Cup began, threatening to punish anybody caught watching it on television in Mogadishu with flogging - or worse.

Some Somalis have always preferred to align themselves with their neighbours in the Middle East rather than those in sub-Saharan Africa, partly because of shared religion but also, sometimes, from a sense of isolationism and ethnic superiority. In choosing that great moment of African pride to launch its first attack outside Somalia, al-Shabab conveys contempt for the rest of its continent. ·