More Churches Bombed

178 die in attacks by Boko Haram

Mike Oboh – Reuters

KANO: Gun and bomb attacks by Islamist insurgents in this Nigerian city have claimed the lives of 178 people, a doctor has said, underlining the

challenge President Goodluck Jonathan faces in preventing a slide into chaos.

A series of coordinated bomb blasts and shooting sprees targeting mainly police stations here sent residents running for cover on Friday. The scale of carnage made this by far the deadliest assault claimed by Boko Haram, which has become the biggest security menace facing Africa´s top oil producer.

“We have 178 people killed in the two main hospitals”, the senior doctor in Kano´s Murtala Mohammed hospital said. “There could be more, because some bodies have not yet come in and others were collected early”.

Boko Haram has been blamed for the deaths of hundreds of people in increasingly sophisticated bombings and shootings, most of them targeting security forces, establishment figures and more recently Christians, in a country divided roughly evenly between them and Muslims.

Explosions struck two churches in the northern city of Bauchi yesterday, destroying one of them. There were no immediate reports of casualties. The government has announced a dusk-to-daw curfew here, an ancient city that was once part of an Islamic caliphate trading riches on caravan routes connecting sub Saharan Africa with the Mediterranean.

Jonathan, a Christian southerner who helped broker a deal that largely ended an insurgency by militants in the oil-rich south-east, has been criticized for failing to grasp the gravity of the crisis unfolding in the north and treating it as purely a security issue that will fizzle out.

United Nations Secretary- General Ban Ki-moon condemned the attacks and hoped the culprits would be brought to justice swiftly.  “The secretary-general is appalled at the frequency and intensity of recent attacks in Nigeria, which demonstrate a wanton and unacceptable disregard for human life,” a spokesman said.

European powers and the African Union have also condemned the attacks. Boko Haram originally said it wanted Islamic law to be applied more widely across Nigeria, but recent messages  its leaders have said  it is attacking anyone who is opposed to it, at present mainly police, the government and Christian groups. It has become increasingly deadly lately.