Ugandan authorities announced Tuesday evening that security forces had shot dead a traditional healer accused of leading a coordinated attack with his supporters against police and military bases during the previous weekend.

Christian Asuman Muganzi was shot dead on Tuesday along with 20 of his followers in his hideout in Kakuka, in the Bundibugyo district, Albert Kaliruga, deputy head of security for the region, told AFP.

The man, known as a "traditional healer", had, according to authorities, coordinated attacks that targeted three districts in remote areas of western Uganda on Saturday, along the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Insurgents, armed with submachine guns and machetes, attacked police and military posts in the districts of Bundibugyo, Kasese and Fort Portal, killing at least one civilian and one soldier.

An army official in Bundibugyo told AFP that the group was seeking to "arm itself to form a tribal militia", but had been repelled by security forces.

Christian Asuman Muganzi was killed in his "sanctuary," Kaliruga said. "We found traditional herbs, fetishes, and other items he used to indoctrinate his recruits and, it seems, to protect them in combat," he added.

Fifteen other people were arrested.

Uganda suffered years of bloody insurgency led by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), founded by former choirboy Joseph Kony, advocating the establishment of a regime based on the Ten Commandments, which multiplied atrocities in the 1990s and 2000s.

Threats persist along its western border with the DRC, a remote region where numerous militias operate, including a branch of the Islamic State.