Uganda, shooting at Transport Minister: daughter and driver killed

Ugandan Transport Minister Katumba Wamala was wounded today after being hit by a bullet near his home in the country’s capital, Kampala. The accident resulted in the death of her daughter and the driver of the car she was traveling in.

According to information gathered by the Ugandan newspaper ‘Daily Monitor’, Wamala, who is also a former Ugandan army general, was shot while in a car in the Kisaasi neighborhood. The photographs circulating on social media show the minister walking on his own legs and with his clothes stained with blood. The Ugandan army chief, David Muhoozi, went to the crash site.

Wamala himself confirmed his daughter’s death in a video posted by the hospital. “I survived. We lost Brenda, but it’s God’s plan,” he said. “Do not worry, I have no serious injuries, only in the arms”, said the minister, who asked the population to pray for his deceased daughter. In this sense, the Ugandan army spokeswoman, Flavia Byekwaso, confirmed that the minister “is out of danger”, even though she refused to provide more details, as reported by the Ugandan television channel Ntv.

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For his part, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni called those responsible for the attack “pigs” and expressed his condolences to the families of the victims. “We will defeat the criminals, as we have done in the past,” he said, in a series of messages posted on his Twitter account. “We have clues about the killers,” revealed Museveni, who stressed that the minister’s bodyguard “should have shot to kill”. “We could have a dead terrorist instead of scaring the terrorists,” he added.

Museveni acknowledged that the bodyguard’s reaction “saved Katumba by making the criminals flee”. “However, killing one or more terrorists would have achieved the same result and more,” he added.

The African country has been the scene of several similar attacks in recent years, including the murder of a former police spokesman and a politician allied to the president, both shot by unidentified people on motorcycles.