Security Apparatus Finds ISIS-Related Training Facility: Tunnel Closed To The Public, Secure Bomb-Making Materials With Wires And Nails

Illustration of ISIS. (Wikimedia Commons/thierry ehrmann)

JAKARTA - A training facility for ISIS-related groups has been found by the authorities, with bomb-making materials and metal as well as cables, weapons, silencers, and tunnels that are closed to the public.

The facility is about 60 kilometers west of the Ugandan capital Kampala, with the country's military saying it managed to detain three people at the facility of the Islamic State-allied rebel group.

The training facility was found at the home of a local man, military spokesman Felix Kulayigye said during a media tour of Kikubajinja village in Luwero district.

A tunnel used for training had been dug in one of the rooms, he said. Security personnel became suspicious after reports emerged from neighbors, "no one is allowed in, no one is seen coming out," Kulayigye said.

Not only that, the authorities also managed to find bomb-making materials including metal, nails, and wires as well as bullets and pistols equipped with silencers, he said.

Kulayigye added that the three suspects who were arrested were said to have purchased a car that they planned to use in the attack.

"They are assembling a bomb that the car will take to explode in a public place," he said.

The Ugandan army began a joint operation with the Congolese army to eradicate the ADF in what started as an insurgency in Uganda but has been based in Congo since the late 1990s and pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group in mid-2019, in November.

Authorities blamed the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a militia based in dense forests in the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo, for a series of bombings in Kampala and elsewhere late last year that killed at least nine people.

In one of the worst attacks, a suicide bomber blew himself up at the entrance to a police station in central Kampala. Three minutes later two other suicide bombers exploded along the road to the parliament building.