Christmas attacks in Nigeria by sect kill 39

JON GAMBRELL

Asso­ci­ated Press

LAGOS, Nige­ria — Ter­ror attacks across Nige­ria by a rad­i­cal Mus­lim sect killed at least 39 peo­ple, with the major­ity dying on the steps of a Catholic church after cel­e­brat­ing Christ­mas Mass as blood pooled in dust from a mas­sive explosion.

Author­i­ties on Sun­day acknowl­edged they could not bring enough emer­gency med­ical per­son­nel to care for the wounded out­side St. Theresa Catholic Church in Madalla near Nigeria’s cap­i­tal. Else­where, a bomb exploded amid gun­fire in the cen­tral Nige­ria city of Jos and a sui­cide car bomber attacked the mil­i­tary in the nation’s north­east as part of an appar­ently coor­di­nated assault by the sect known as Boko Haram.

The Christ­mas Day vio­lence, denounced by world lead­ers and the Vat­i­can, shows the threat of the widen­ing insur­rec­tion posed by Boko Haram against Nigeria’s weak cen­tral gov­ern­ment. Despite a recent para­mil­i­tary crack­down against the sect in the oil-rich nation, it appears that Africa’s most pop­u­lous nation remains unable to stop the threat.

The White House con­demned what it called a “sense­less” attack, offered its con­do­lences to the Niger­ian peo­ple and pledged to assist author­i­ties in bring­ing those respon­si­ble to justice.

In a state­ment, Britain’s For­eign Sec­re­tary William Hague said, “These are cow­ardly attacks on fam­i­lies gath­ered in peace and prayer to cel­e­brate a day which sym­bol­ises har­mony and good­will towards others.”

U.N. Sec­re­tary Gen­eral Ban Ki-Moon called in a state­ment for an end to sec­tar­ian vio­lence in the country.

The first explo­sion on Sun­day struck St. Theresa Catholic Church just after 8 a.m. The attack killed 35 peo­ple and wounded another 52, said Slaku Luguard, a coor­di­na­tor with Nigeria’s National Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency.

Though bil­lions of dol­lars of oil money flow into the nation’s bud­get yearly, Luguard’s agency could only send text mes­sages to jour­nal­ists ask­ing for their help in get­ting more ambulances.

Those wounded filled the cement floors of a nearby gov­ern­ment hos­pi­tal, with tele­vi­sion images show­ing them cry­ing in pools of their own blood. Corpses lined an open-air morgue.

The bomb­ing and the delayed response drew anger from those gath­er­ing around the church after the blast. The crowd ini­tially blocked emer­gency work­ers from the blast site, only allow­ing them in after sol­diers arrived.

“We’re try­ing to calm the sit­u­a­tion,” Luguard said. “There are some angry peo­ple around try­ing to cause problems.”

In Jos, a sec­ond explo­sion struck near the Moun­tain of Fire and Mir­a­cles Church, state gov­ern­ment spokesman Pam Ayuba said. Gun­men later opened fire on police guard­ing the area, killing one offi­cer, he said. Two other locally made explo­sives were found in a nearby build­ing and disarmed.

By noon Sun­day, explo­sions echoed through the streets of Damaturu, the cap­i­tal of Yobe state where fight­ing between secu­rity forces and the sect already had killed at least 61 peo­ple in recent days. The most seri­ous attack on Sun­day came when a sui­cide bomber det­o­nated a car loaded with explo­sives at the state head­quar­ters of Nigeria’s secret police, the State Secu­rity Service.

The bomber killed three peo­ple in the blast, though the senior mil­i­tary com­man­der appar­ently tar­geted sur­vived the attack, the State Secu­rity Ser­vice said in a statement.

After the bomb­ings, a Boko Haram spokesman using the nom de guerre Abul-Qaqa claimed respon­si­bil­ity for the attacks in an inter­view with The Daily Trust, the news­pa­per of record across Nigeria’s Mus­lim north. The sect has used the news­pa­per in the past to com­mu­ni­cate with public.

Boko Haram has car­ried out increas­ingly sophis­ti­cated and bloody attacks in its cam­paign to imple­ment strict Shariah law across Nige­ria, a mul­ti­eth­nic nation of more than 160 mil­lion peo­ple. The group, whose name means “West­ern edu­ca­tion is sac­ri­lege” in the local Hausa lan­guage, is respon­si­ble for at least 504 killings this year alone, accord­ing to an Asso­ci­ated Press count.

This Christ­mas attack comes a year after a series of Christ­mas Eve bomb­ings in Jos claimed by the mil­i­tants left at least 32 dead and 74 wounded. The group also claimed respon­si­bil­ity for the Aug. 26 bomb­ing of the United Nations head­quar­ters in Nigeria’s cap­i­tal Abuja that killed 24 peo­ple and wounded 116 others.

The sect came to national promi­nence in 2009, when its mem­bers rioted and burned police sta­tions near its base of Maid­uguri, a dusty north­east­ern city on the cusp of the Sahara Desert. Nigeria’s mil­i­tary vio­lently put down the attack, crush­ing the sect’s mosque into shards as its leader was arrested and died in police cus­tody. About 700 peo­ple died dur­ing the violence.

While ini­tially tar­get­ing ene­mies via hit-and-run assas­si­na­tions from the back of motor­bikes after the 2009 riot, vio­lence by Boko Haram now has a new sophis­ti­ca­tion and appar­ent plan­ning that includes high-profile attacks with greater casu­al­ties. That has fueled spec­u­la­tion about the group’s ties as it has splin­tered into at least three dif­fer­ent fac­tions, diplo­mats and secu­rity sources say. They say the more extreme wing of the sect main­tains con­tact with ter­ror groups in North Africa and Somalia.

Tar­get­ing the group has remained dif­fi­cult, as sect mem­bers are scat­tered through­out north­ern Nige­ria and nearby Cameroon, Chad and Niger. Ana­lysts say polit­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions also likely play a part in the country’s thus-far muted response: Pres­i­dent Good­luck Jonathan, a Chris­t­ian from the south, may be hes­i­tant to use force in the nation’s pre­dom­i­nantly Mus­lim north.

In a state­ment, Jonathan con­demned the blasts as a “unwar­ranted affront on our col­lec­tive safety and freedom.”

“I want to reas­sure all Nige­ri­ans that gov­ern­ment will not relent in its deter­mi­na­tion to bring to jus­tice all the per­pe­tra­tors of today’s acts of vio­lence and all oth­ers before now,” Jonathan said.

How­ever, Jonathan has made the same promises after a series of spi­ral­ing attacks by the group. His spokesman, Reuben Abati, defended the pres­i­dent by say­ing the coun­try planned to spend more on secu­rity and had made arrests tar­get­ing the group.

“The admin­is­tra­tion is very deter­mined to address this new threat of ter­ror­ism that seems to have slipped into our envi­ron­ment,” Abati told the AP.

But anger con­tin­ues to grow over the sect’s appar­ent abil­ity to strike at will — anger that could be seen at St. Theresa Catholic Church. After the blast, some­one picked up a burnt piece of wood to scrawl: “Rev­o­lu­tion now in the coun­try” on its cement walls.

Posted by AP News on Dec 25 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.