Obama warns Africa after Uganda attack

  1. Posted on Wednesday 14 July 2010 - 16:05
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    Nangayi Guyson, AfricaNews reporter in Kampala, Uganda
    US President Barack Obama warned Africans that terrorist groups like al-Qaeda saw their "innocent" lives as cheap, in a personal challenge to extremists on the continent after the Uganda bombings. Obama was reacting to recent two bomb attacks in Uganda killing 76 people while watching the World Cup.
    Obama: Africa's future is up to Africans themselves
    A US official meanwhile branded al-Qaeda, linked to the Somalia-based al-shabab group which claimed responsibilities for the attacks, as "racist", as the United States cranked up its diplomatic response to increasingly active extremists in Africa.

    Obama, leveraging his African heritage and popularity on the continent, took direct aim at Al-Shabaab and al-Qaeda after attacks on crowds in Kampala glued to the World Cup final on Sunday killed at least 76 people.

    "What you’ve seen in some of the statements that have been made by these terrorist organizations is that they do not regard African life as valuable in and of itself," Obama told the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC).

    "They see it as a potential place where you can carry out ideological battles that kill innocents without regard to long-term consequences for their short-term tactical gains," he said in the interview broadcast on Wednesday.

    Obama's intervention marked the first, direct comments by the president, whose father was Kenyan, on the Kampala bombings.

    A senior American official made clear Obama was taking a direct swipe at the ideology and motives of al-Qaeda affiliates on the continent, which US intelligence agencies say are the extremist group's most active franchises.

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