Nigeria Hotel Blast Kills 3 And Injures 14

[High_Gravity]

Nigeria Hotel Blast Kills 3 And Injures 14

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria -- An explosion at a hotel killed three people and wounded 14 others in northeastern Nigeria only days before the state's gubernatorial election, police said Monday. There was no immediate claim of responsibility but the blast came as a radical Muslim sect vowed to keep up its fight.

A second explosion went off Monday morning at a cattle market in the town of Maiduguri, which has long been wracked by violence related to the radical Islamic sect. There were no casualties from that blast, police chief Mike Zuokumor said.

"The enemies of Nigeria are scaring people from coming out to vote," Zuokumor said as election workers prepared for Tuesday's gubernatorial poll. Officials already have delayed governor elections in two other northern states after violence following the April 16 presidential vote left at least 500 dead.

The radical Islamic group known as Boko Haram had released a statement earlier Sunday defending its string of deadly attacks on police and religious leaders in recent months.

"All the people that we are killing, including ward heads, politicians, the police and the army have erred, because they are associating themselves with the government in its effort to arrest our Muslim brothers and sabotage Islam," the group said in its statement released Sunday.

Boko Haram was thought to be vanquished in 2009 after Nigeria's military crushed its mosque into concrete shards, and its leader was arrested and died in police custody. But now, Maiduguri and surrounding villages in Borno state again live in fear of the group.

While the presidential vote sparked deadly riots across northern Nigeria, Borno state has seen little violence directly related to the voting so far this month. The group did, however, claim responsibility earlier this year for killing Modu Fannami Gubio, the Borno state candidate of the All Nigeria People's Party.

Boko Haram, whose name in the local Hausa language means "Western education is sacrilege" has campaigned for the implementation of strict Shariah law.

Nigeria, a nation of 150 million people, is divided between the Christian-dominated south and the Muslim north. A dozen states across Nigeria's north already have Shariah law in place, though the area remains under the control of secular state governments.

Nigeria Hotel Blast Kills 3 And Injures 14

 

[waltky]

Boko Haram suspected of executing No. Korean doctors...

Foreign doctors killed in north-eastern Nigeria
10 February 2013 - Three North Korean doctors have been killed in the north-eastern Nigerian state of Yobe, officials say.

Residents said they were killed during the night in the town of Potiskum. Two of them had their throats slit while the third was beheaded, they added. Officials said the victims had been working at a government-run hospital. No-one has said they were behind the attack, but it happened in an area where the Islamist militant group, Boko Haram, has been active in recent years. More than 600 people were believed to have been killed in 2012 by the group, which is fighting to overthrow the government and create an Islamic state in Nigeria's predominantly Muslim north.

'No guards'

Yobe state police commissioner Sanusi Rufai said it was nevertheless too early to know who was behind the attack, which happened either late on Saturday or before dawn on Sunday. Police have begun an investigation. The victims were reportedly found inside their flat on Sunday morning, after people became worried that they were not answering the door. An official at the General Hospital in Potiskum told the Associated Press that the victims had worked there. He added that their block of flats had no security guards, and that they had routinely travelled through the town in taxis without a police escort.

Officials had earlier said the doctors were from South Korea, rather than North Korea. Residents meanwhile told AFP that they were Chinese nationals who had been employed by the state ministry of health for about a year. Mr Rufai also said they were from China. On Friday, nine polio vaccination workers - all said to have been women - were shot dead in northern Nigeria. Some were killed in Kano, others at a health centre in Hotoro, outside the city. President Goodluck Jonathan condemned the killings, for which no group has claimed responsibility, and vowed that the campaign to eradicate polio would be carried through to a successful conclusion.

BBC News - Foreign doctors killed in north-eastern Nigeria

 

[waltky]

Another church attack in Nigeria...

Gunmen kill nine in northeast Nigeria church attack
Mon Jun 2, 2014 - Gunmen opened fire on a church service in the northeast Nigerian village of Attangara, killing nine people, police and a witness said on Monday.

The village is in the Gwoza hills, near the Cameroon border, and the main stronghold of radical Islamist sect Boko Haram which has killed civilians on an almost daily basis since stepping up its campaign of violence earlier this year. "As we were holding service, we started hearing gunshots and everybody fled, some through the windows, and ran into the bush," resident Matha Yohana said of Sunday's attack. A police source said nine were killed in the assault. "More than 10 of them were riding motorcycles and one car," she said, adding some local vigilantes had pursued the attackers, killing four of them and detaining three.

Nigeria's military said on Monday it had arrested a suspect it believes was behind a bomb attack that killed 18 people watching football on television in the northeast the previous day. There has been no claim of responsibility for the blast that also wounded 19 people in Kabang town in Adamawa state, a stronghold of Islamist militant group Boko Haram whose struggle for an Islamic state is centered in the northeast. "A key suspect in the terror bomb explosion that rocked Kabang Community in Mubi, Adamawa State ... has been arrested by troops who cordoned (off the) area in swift response to the explosion," Defence spokesman Brigadier General Chris Olukolade told Reuters by telephone from the capital Abuja.

The final toll was 18 killed, 19 wounded, he added. Initial reports had put the death toll at 14. Adamwa state has been under a state of emergency declared by the government in May last year, with military patrols and an offensive meant to dismantle the Boko Haram network. Boko Haram, whose violent struggle for an Islamic state in religiously-mixed Nigeria has killed thousands in the past five years, has set off several bombs across north and central Nigeria since April.

The sect is still holding 219 girls abducted from a secondary school on April 14. Nigeria has accepted help from foreign powers such as the United States to try to free them. Nigeria's president ordered "a full-scale operation" against Boko Haram on Thursday, seeking to reassure parents of the kidnapped girls that their daughters would be freed. Boko Haram, seen as the main security threat to Africa's biggest economy and top oil producer, has killed thousands since launching an uprising in 2009.

Gunmen kill nine in northeast Nigeria church attack | Reuters