At least 150 people died in a “heinous” wave of gun and bomb attacks in northern Nigeria that were on Saturday claimed by the Islamist Boko Haram sect.
Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan condemned the assaults, which officials said included at least five suicide bomb blasts and “directed security agencies to ensure the arrest of perpetrators of these heinous acts,” his spokesman, Reuben Abati, said in a statement.
As corpses piled up in the morgue, a rescue agency official said the body count stood at 150.
“I was involved in the evacuation of corpses to the morgue. I personally counted 150 bodies,” the official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said at the hospital. He said some families had already collected their loved ones for burial, reducing the number to 97 by end of the day.
A reporter counted 97 corpses still in the mortuary.
The Red Cross earlier said the death toll stood at 63, while police spoke of 53, of whom 11 were members of its force.
“From our inventory, 53 people have so far been killed in the attack,” local police chief Suleimon Lawal said.
The 15-nation UN Security Council released a statement saying it “condemned in the strongest terms” the attacks in Nigeria. The council expressed condolences to the families.
A member of the Boko Haram sect on Saturday claimed responsibility.
“We are responsible for the attack in [northeastern] Borno [state] and Damaturu,” Abul Qaqa said by telephone.
“We will continue attacking federal government formations until security forces stop persecuting our members and vulnerable civilians,” Qaqa said.
The Friday bomb and gun attacks targeted police stations, an army base and churches in the cities of Damaturu, Maiduguri and two other small towns.
Jonathan’s spokesman said the attacks had forced him to skip his brother’s wedding which took place in his village in southern Nigeria on Saturday.
The military deployed to curb the violence in Maiduguri said there were four suicide bomb attacks in parts of the city, including an army base and on the outskirts of Maiduguri.
The attackers bombed their targets then took on the security forces in gun battles in Damaturu. Residents said gunfire rang out for several hours across the city after the explosions.
“It was a suicide bomb attack at one of our buildings. The attacker came in a Honda CRV and rammed into the building and explosives exploded,” Lawal said.
A reporter said no office was still standing at the police headquarters, which was still smouldering about 24 hours after the attack. Three burned cars lay in front of the building.
A journalist described scenes of chaos and destruction in Damaturu.
“In fact, Damaturu is looking just like Libya ... burnt cars and buildings,” the reporter said.
In a mainly Christian neighborhood of Damaturu called Jerusalem, six churches were bombed in addition to a police station.
“A police station and a mechanical workshop of the police were attacked. Six churches in the area were also bombed,” resident Edwin Silas said, adding: “The whole city is traumatized.”
The string of attacks came two days ahead of the annual Muslim celebration of Eid al-Adha, or the Feast of Sacrifice. Police have been placed on red alert nationwide.
Meanwhile, militants from Boko Haram, whose name means “Western education is sin” in the regional Hausa language, yesterday gunned down a police inspector in the city of Maiduguri, the sect’s spiritual home.
Sect gunmen stopped the officer’s car at gunpoint as he neared a mosque to pray with his family, local police commissioner Simeon Midenda said.
They ordered the family away, then shot the inspector to death, Midenda said. The sect members later allowed his family to drive the car away, he said.
“Our men who live in the midst of the Boko Haram are not safe,” Midenda said.
Additional reporting by AP
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
RSS