Nigeria Investigating UN Attack as Death Toll Rises, Police Say
Nigeria is investigating claims by Islamic militant group Boko Haram that it was responsible for yesterday’s suicide car-bomb attack on a United Nations office complex in Abuja that killed at least 19, police said.
“The investigation has started, that’s all I can tell you for now,” Abuja police spokesman Moshood Jimoh said today in a phone interview from the capital city.
The number casualties rose to 19 by last night with more than 30 injured, said Yushau Shuaib, a spokesman for the National Emergency Management Agency, in an e-mailed statement.
The explosion took place after a Honda CR-V crashed into the main UN building on Independence Avenue in the central business district, Abuja Police Commissioner Mike Zuokumor told reporters yesterday. The blast destroyed the reception area and tore out the first floor of the four-story building, leaving concrete beams exposed and shattered glass strewn over the compound.
At least 12 UN agencies operated in the building, UN spokeswoman Corinne Momal-Vanian said by phone from Geneva.
Boko Haram claimed responsibility for yesterday’s attack, Daily Trust newspaper reported today, citing Imam Shekau, a spokesman for the group. The BBC reported on its website yesterday that it received a phone call by an unidentified Boko Haram spokesman.
‘Barbaric, Senseless’
The blast was “barbaric, senseless and cowardly,” President Goodluck Jonathan said yesterday in an e-mailed statement.
Boko Haram has been blamed by Nigerian authorities for a series of bomb attacks and killings since last year. Gunmen suspected to be members of the group attacked a police station and a bank on Aug. 25 in the northeastern town of Gombi, killing 16 people, including five police officers, a soldier and 10 bank customers, said Ahmed Isa, a local official.
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation with more than 140 million people, is roughly split between a mainly Muslim north and a predominantly Christian south. More than 14,000 people died in ethnic and religious clashes in the West African nation between 1999 and 2009, according to the Brussels-based International Crisis Group.
To contact the reporter on this story: Elisha Bala-Gbogbo in Abuja at ebalagbogbo@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Antony Sguazzin at asguazzin@bloomberg.net.
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