On July 11, 2010, suicide bombers struck two crowded venues in Kampala, Uganda's capital, during the final match of the FIFA World Cup. One blast tore through the Ethiopian Village restaurant; another hit the Kyadondo Rugby Club nearby. The coordinated attacks killed 74 people and wounded 85, making it one of the deadliest terrorist strikes in East African history. Al-Shabaab, a militant group affiliated with al-Qaeda, claimed responsibility within hours, framing the bombings as retaliation for Uganda's military involvement in Somalia.

Uganda had deployed troops to Somalia starting in 2007 as part of an African Union mission to prop up the transitional federal government against Al-Shabaab's insurgency. The group, whose name means "The Youth" in Arabic, had grown from a radical faction within Somalia's Islamic Courts Union into a formidable terror organization controlling swaths of southern and central Somalia. By 2010, Al-Shabaab had begun striking beyond Somalia's borders, targeting countries it viewed as enemies of Islam or obstacles to its regional ambitions. Uganda, as a Christian-majority nation and a key military partner of the West in the Horn of Africa, represented both a symbolic and strategic target.

The Kampala bombings revealed the group's capacity for sophisticated operations and its willingness to inflict mass civilian casualties. Survivors described scenes of chaos: bodies scattered among overturned tables, the stench of smoke and blood, families searching desperately for loved ones. The attacks intensified international concern about terrorism spreading from Somalia across the region and deepened Uganda's commitment to the military mission. For Ugandans, the bombings shattered a sense of relative security in Kampala and exposed the real costs of regional conflicts. Al-Shabaab would continue launching attacks for years, making it one of Africa's most dangerous militant organizations until a significant leadership vacuum opened after a U.S. drone strike killed its leader in 2014.