The Guardian reports that the death toll following protests triggered by Bobi Wine’s arrest, is rising. The protests are taking place in different cities with more than 350 people arrested.
“At least 19 people have been killed in Uganda over two days in the country’s worst unrest in a decade, as security forces try to quell protests triggered by the arrest of presidential candidate Bobi Wine.
Young people burned tyres and blockaded streets in Uganda’s capital, Kampala, on Thursday, and soldiers fanned out across the city with armoured vehicles, a day after the arrest of Wine, a popular reggae singer who is the leading challenger to President Yoweri Museveni in forthcoming elections.
“This is a war-like situation, so the army has to deploy,” Brig Flavia Byekwaso, a military spokesperson, told Reuters. “You can see what is going on, people are being stoned, people are being killed, vehicles are being vandalised, tyres everywhere. These things are spontaneous on all streets, so police cannot handle such a situation.”
Images posted on social media showed police in Kampala firing indiscriminately at people in buildings overlooking the protests and unidentifiable men in plainclothes, believed to be security personnel, firing automatic weapons. More than 350 people were arrested, police said.
The exact death toll in the unrest, which spread to other cities during the day, is uncertain. Kampala’s main mortuary reported receiving 19 bodies, with postmortems revealing the causes of death as gunshots, suffocation from teargas and injuries sustained by a “hit and run” car accident, the Observer, a local newspaper, reported.”