Africa fears being a collateral victim of violence in the Middle East

For almost a week, the Kenyan anti-terrorism police have been on edge. She fears possible attacks by armed Islamist terrorists from Al Shebab carried out in “solidarity with Hamas”. Fears reinforced in Nairobi where the government has lined up behind the Jewish state and signaled its support for its offensive against the Palestinian Islamist movement.

Shebab, a group affiliated with Al-Qaeda, has already struck several times in Kenya since the country became militarily involved in fighting the Islamist insurgency in southern Somalia.

”Terrorist groups like Shebab could carry out attacks in solidarity with Hamas,” declared the Kenyan anti-terrorist police on X (formerly Twitter). “Kenyans must be vigilant and report terrorist activities to the police for action”‘, she adds.

On Kenya’s western border, Uganda, which has been battling for years with the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) terrorist group which has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, also lives with the fear of terrorist actions. In recent days, President Yoweri Museveni announced that attacks had been foiled in Catholic churches in the country. Actions carried out, according to the president, by members of the ADF who managed to flee to the Democratic Republic of Congo. The ADF “planned to plant (bombs) in the churches of Kibibi (…). They were reported to the police and defused,” he wrote on X.

The Ugandans, who bombed ADF sites in the DRC last weekend, warned of reprisals from Islamist movements, who reportedly lost several dozen of their members in these bombings. “These air attacks associated with tensions in the Middle East raise fears of an outbreak of violence throughout the country”explains a diplomat from the region who insists on financial aid “significant enough from the Islamic State to the ADF which could motivate these Ugandan rebels to react quickly and strongly in the current context. »