Uganda police shoot 2 for violating movement ban

KAMPALA: Ugandan police said on Friday that two men were in hospital after being shot for violating restrictions on transport in a bid to curb the spread of coronavirus.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has urged people to stay home but has stopped short of ordering a lockdown. Schools, places of entertainment and worship and some agricultural markets have been shut for a month and people have been banned from using public transport, and being more than three to a car, or one on a private motorbike.

"Police officers on duty to enforce a presidential directive stopped two men on a motorbike in Mukono (near Kampala) on Thursday," Uganda metropolitan police spokesman, Patrick Onyango told AFP.

"They attacked one of the officers, he fired the warning shot in the air but they charged at him and he shot one of them in the leg and another in the stomach." Onyango said the men, who were in hospital, had said they were not aware of the directive banning public transport and private motorbikes carrying more than one person.

Uganda has recorded 18 confirmed cases of coronavirus, many of them -- as in Rwanda -- travellers who had come from Dubai.