US: Sect bomb attacks possible in Nigeria capital

JON GAMBRELL

Asso­ci­ated Press

LAGOS, Nige­ria (AP) — After a week­end of vio­lence and fear, U.S. offi­cials warned Sun­day that lux­ury hotels fre­quented by for­eign­ers and Nigeria’s elite may be bombed by a rad­i­cal Mus­lim sect as the death toll from attacks in the country’s north­east rose to more than 100.

The warn­ing by the U.S. Embassy shows how seri­ously diplo­mats take the threat posed by the out­lawed Islamist group known locally as Boko Haram, which pre­vi­ously bombed the United Nations head­quar­ters in the cap­i­tal, Abuja, killing 24.

The unusu­ally spe­cific warn­ing from the U.S. Embassy iden­ti­fied pos­si­ble tar­gets in Abuja as the Hilton, Nicon Lux­ury and Sher­a­ton hotels. With pop­u­lar restau­rants and bars, the hotels draw diplo­mats, politi­cians and even reformed oil delta militants.

The embassy said an attack may come as Mus­lims in the oil-rich nation cel­e­brate the Eid al-Adha hol­i­day and that its diplo­mats and staff had been instructed to avoid those hotels.

Still, Niger­ian offi­cials con­tin­ued to down­play the threat posed by the mil­i­tants, hop­ing to reas­sure Africa’s most pop­u­lous nation that every­thing remains under con­trol in a coun­try often vio­lently divided by reli­gious and eth­nic differences.

“We’re all expected to live in peace, but as a nation, we have our own chal­lenges,” Pres­i­dent Good­luck Jonathan said in a speech tele­vised nationally.

“Dur­ing this holy period, we still have inci­dents hap­pen­ing here and there,” added Jonathan, a Chris­t­ian, who appeared wear­ing a prayer cap and the tra­di­tional robes of the country’s Mus­lim north.

U.S. offi­cials offered no other details about how the embassy received the threat infor­ma­tion. Deb MacLean, a U.S. Embassy spokes­woman in Abuja, declined to com­ment Sunday.

It wouldn’t be the first time Abuja saw itself tar­geted by Boko Haram, which has waged an increas­ingly bloody sec­tar­ian fight against Nigeria’s weak cen­tral gov­ern­ment. A sui­cide bomber claimed by the group attacked the U.N. head­quar­ters in August, while another bomber tar­geted the fed­eral police head­quar­ters in June.

Still, most attacks have tar­geted Nigeria’s arid and impov­er­ished north­east, so any strike against hotels in Abuja would be an esca­la­tion that shows the group’s abil­ity to strike at will — even against for­eign­ers and its elite.

The warn­ing came as a Niger­ian Red Cross offi­cial said more than 100 peo­ple were killed in a series of attacks Fri­day in the northeast.

Ibrahim Bulama said he expected the death toll to rise in Damaturu, the cap­i­tal of rural Yobe state. He said mourn­ers quickly buried some bod­ies in line with Mus­lim tra­di­tion, mak­ing a pre­cise count difficult.

While the hard-hit city remained calm as its Mus­lim inhab­i­tants cel­e­brated the reli­gious hol­i­day Sun­day, army and police units manned road­blocks and streets remained largely empty, Bulama said. The state gov­ern­ment announced a dusk-to-dawn cur­few for the entire state.

Mean­while, a police inspec­tor was killed Sun­day in Boko Haram’s spir­i­tual home of Maid­uguri about 80 miles (130 kilo­me­ters) east of Damaturu. Sect gun­men stopped the officer’s car at gun­point as he neared a mosque to pray with his fam­ily, police com­mis­sioner Simeon Midenda said.

Gun­men ordered the fam­ily away, then shot the inspec­tor, Midenda said.

World lead­ers from the United Nations to Pope Bene­dict XVI have called for an end to the vio­lence, though Niger­ian offi­cials largely have down­played the threat. Jonathan has repeat­edly said that all coun­tries in the world face ter­ror­ism, while oth­ers have urged local jour­nal­ists to exer­cise restraint in their report­ing in the name of patriotism.

Despite the bomb­ings and gun bat­tles in north­east Nige­ria, Defense Min­is­ter Mohammed Bello told jour­nal­ists Sun­day that “a lot of progress” has been made there.

“I believe our secu­rity agen­cies are doing very well in con­tain­ing the sit­u­a­tion,” Bello said.

Nigeria’s his­tory, how­ever, shows the gov­ern­ment often waits until crises esca­late out of con­trol before respond­ing with harsh mil­i­tary crack­downs. In 1980, the gov­ern­ment sup­pressed a rad­i­cal Mus­lim sect called the Mai­tat­sine only after its mem­bers rioted, with the vio­lence and sub­se­quent crack­down leav­ing 4,000 dead.

Rumors had per­sisted then that the Mai­tat­sine received aid from Nigeria’s elite, but became too much for politi­cians to con­trol. Sim­i­lar rumors now sur­round Boko Haram, which wants the strict imple­men­ta­tion of Shariah law across Nige­ria, a nation of more than 160 mil­lion split largely between a Chris­t­ian south and Mus­lim north.

Other ana­lysts sug­gest Jonathan, a Chris­t­ian who took power after the 2010 death of an elected Mus­lim leader, remains unsure of his grip on the nation. The April elec­tion that saw Jonathan cement his hold on the pres­i­dency also sparked polit­i­cal and reli­gious riot­ing across Nigeria’s north that left 800 peo­ple dead.

Boko Haram’s name means “West­ern edu­ca­tion is sac­ri­lege” in the local Hausa lan­guage. It rejects West­ern ideals like Nigeria’s U.S.-styled democ­racy. Fol­low­ers believe that democ­racy has destroyed the coun­try with cor­rupt politicians.

The lat­est attacks occurred ahead of Sunday’s cel­e­bra­tion of the feast of sac­ri­fice, when Mus­lims around the world slaugh­ter sheep and cat­tle in remem­brance of Abraham’s near-sacrifice of his son.

An Asso­ci­ated Press count shows the group has killed at least 361 peo­ple this year alone.

Posted by AP News on Nov 6 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.