Attacks won't chase Uganda from Somalia: Museveni

[Coeus]

President Yoweri Museveni said terrorist attacks will not make Uganda withdraw its troops from Somalia, days after a grenade blast killed three people in Nairobi on a Kampala-bound bus.

"Uganda will not succumb to terrorist activities," the president said in a statement, offering sympathy to the victims of Monday night's explosion.

"After the World Cup tournament bomb blasts that rocked Kampala, Al-Shebab wrongly believed that Ugandans would abandon their Somali brothers and sisters," he added, referring to the Somali Islamist group behind twin attacks on the night of the football World Cup on July 11 which killed 76.

"The continued stay in Somalia by Ugandan troops proved to the Somalis that Uganda is a reliable ally."

Ugandan soldiers form the bulk of the African Union's more than 7,000-strong force in Mogadishu.

The Shebab claimed Ugandans were targeted in the July suicide attacks because of Kampala's support for the weak, Western-backed Somalia government.

Uganda's police chief Kale Kayihura told journalists this week that there were "strong indications" Islamist groups were trying to strike Kampala during the December holidays.