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US President Barack Obama says groups like Al-Qaeda saw lives in Africa as cheap, in a personal challenge to extremists on the continent after the Uganda bombings.
A US official meanwhile branded Al-Qaeda, linked to the Somalia-based Shebab group which claimed 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 Shebab 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 said.
"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.
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.
US officials drew parallels between the Uganda attacks and the 1998 bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed hundreds of Africans, to suggest Al-Qaeda viewed people on the continent as acceptable casualties of its wider goals.
Shebab insurgents said the blasts that ripped through a crowded bar and a restaurant in Kampala on Sunday were retaliation for the presence of Ugandan troops in Mogadishu.
