AFP: Kampala attacks were 'wake-up call' for East Africa: US

AFP: Kampala attacks were 'wake-up call' for East Africa: US Kampala attacks were 'wake-up call' for East Africa: US (AFP) – 6 hours ago WASHINGTON — Suicide bombings this month in Kampala by Somalia's Al-Qaeda-inspired Shebab militants served as a "wake-up call" about the wider terrorism threat in the region, a US official said Tuesday. "If the Shebab can strike Kampala, it's also a threat to all of Somalia's regional neighbors, from Djibouti, Ethiopia and Kenya, all the way down to Tanzania," said Johnnie Carson, US assistant secretary of state for Africa. The Shebab, an Islamist extremist group that controls most of central and western Somalia, claimed responsibility for the attacks in Uganda's capital on July 11 that killed 76 people gathered to watch the World Cup final. Carson described the attacks as "a wake-up call," and said that regional states "now recognize that the threat emanating from Somalia is not only about refugees and illegal arms, but also one about terrorism." An African Union peacekeeping force, made up of 6,000 Burundian and Ugandan soldiers, has been fighting the Shebab and other insurgent groups street to street in Mogadishu since May 2009....