27-Dec-2011 - Explosion Rips Through Catholic Church in Nigeria

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At least five bombings were reported, including three at churches. The worst appeared to be at a packed Catholic church just outside the capital, Abuja, where at least 27 people were killed during mass, according to media reports. The militant Islamist sect Boko Haram claimed responsibility for several of the bombings and was suspected in others. Coming after several days of gun battles last week in which more than 60 people were killed and a wave of attacks in November that killed more than 100, the Christmas bombings were clearly intended to symbolically announce the group’s aims in a country whose 150 million people are about half Muslim and 40 percent Christian. The same group carried out a series of Christmas Eve bombings last year. The first explosion struck St. Theresa Catholic Church in Madalla, about 25 miles northwest of Abuja, which was filled for the Christmas service. The Rev. Christopher Barde, an assistant priest, told Reuters that 27 bodies had been recovered so far. “Mass just ended and people were rushing out of the church and suddenly I heard a loud sound — bam!” one witness, Nnana Nwachukwu, told Reuters. “Cars were in flames and bodies littered everywhere.” A parishioner, Timothy Onyekwere, told Reuters that he was NHL jerseys supply in the church with his family when the bomb exploded. “I just ran out,” he said. “Now I don’t even know where my children or my wife are. I don’t know how many were killed but there were many dead.” Rescue workers were struggling to cope with the wounded. The National Emergency Management Agency said it initially did not have enough ambulances available to ferry the wounded to hospitals. Angry crowds gathered at the site impeded the rescue efforts and blocked rescuers from getting inside the church. “We’re trying to calm the situation,” Slaku Luguard, a coordinator with the National Emergency Management Agency, told The Associated Press. “There are some angry people around trying to cause problems.” A Boko Haram spokesman, identified as Abu Qaqa, claimed responsibility for the attacks in statements to the local media. A second explosion on Sunday struck near the Mountain of Fire and Miracles Church in Jos, a government spokesman, Pam Ayuba, told The A.P. He said gunmen later opened fire on police officers guarding the area, killing one officer. Two other bombs were found in a nearby building and disarmed, he said. “The military are here on ground and have taken control over the entire place,” he said. Jos, which lies on the border of the predominantly Muslim north and the Christian south, has been the scene of numerous sectarian attacks that have killed thousands of people in recent years. News agencies reported at least three other explosions, two in the city of Damaturu and another at a church in Gadaka. A suicide bomber attacked the Yobe state headquarters of Nigeria’s secret police in Damaturu, killing three people, the police said in cheap nba jerseys a statement. The bomber tried to attack the convoy of a battalion commander but was stopped by guards, the statement said. A police spokeswoman said the agency had been carrying out an operation against members of Boko Haram, whose name translates roughly as “Western education is sacrilege.” Damaturu was the scene of heavy fighting between Boko Haram and Nigerian security forces on Thursday and Friday. The army said it killed more than 50 members of the sect, and that three of its soldiers were also killed. Boko Haram claimed responsibility for a Nov. 4 attack on Damaturu, that killed more than 100. The group also claimed to have carried out the suicide car bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Abuja in August, killing 24 people. Nigeria’s president, Goodluck Jonathan, a southern Christian who has dismissed the Islamist rebellion as “a temporary setback,” called Sunday’s bombings “unfortunate” but said Boko Haram would not be around forever, Reuters reported. “It will end one day.” Recent events, however, point to the group’s resilience. Boko Haram came to national prominence when it rioted and burned police stations near Maiduguri, in the northeast, in 2009, killing about 700 people. A military operation against it that year, including the arrest and death of the group’s leader, merely pushed it underground, and attacks continued. The group calls for the strict application of Shariah law across the country, and the freeing of imprisoned members in nfl headset the north, where mass unemployment and poverty have fueled social discontent. It has focused its attacks largely on government targets, especially the police, but the attack on the United Nations headquarters last summer suggested it had expended its scope to international targets, raising fears among Western analysts and diplomats that it was becoming a transnational force, with possible links to Al Qaeda’s North African affiliate.

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27-Dec-2011 - Explosion Rips Through Catholic Church in Nigeria

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The sect, known as Boko Haram, until now mostly targeted the police, government and military in its insurgency effort, but the bombings on Sunday represented a new, religion-tinged front, a tactic that threatens to exploit the already frayed relations between Nigeria’s nearly evenly split populations of Christians and Muslims. The worst bombing was at the St. Theresa Catholic Church in Madala, a suburb of the capital, Abuja, where an nike nfl jerseys explosion ripped through a crowd of worshipers as they left morning Mass. The bomb tore through the church, said Bassey Udo, a Nigerian journalist in Madala, and left a deep crater. A government spokesman, Reuben Abati, said at least 25 people were killed in that blast and that many were wounded in a chaos of fire and rubble, suggesting the toll would rise. At least two other churches in other towns were attacked Saturday evening and Sunday, as well as a police headquarters in the north, an area where dozens have been killed in a bloody conflict in recent days between the security forces and the sect. Officials said the attack on the police headquarters was a suicide bombing and that at least three officers were killed. In Madala, there were charred bodies on the street and twisted cars burned in front of the church. Rescue workers struggling to cope with the mayhem faced a shortage of ambulances for the dozens of wounded and an enraged crowd that blocked them from entering the church until soldiers arrived. Boko Haram, which roughly translates as “Western education forbidden,” seeks to impose a stricter application of Shariah, or Islamic, law across the largely Muslim northern half of Nigeria. For more than two years it has been waging an insurgency against the government, mainly through bombings. Hundreds have been killed in these attacks, mostly in the north, many of them police officers, government officials and military personnel. Critics of the government campaign against Boko Haram say that the effort has not only failed but has increased the sect’s appeal, because the security forces’ heavy-handed tactics have given it new sympathizers. The sect’s attacks have been further bolstered by festering football jerseys economic resentment in the impoverished and relatively neglected north, which has an exploding birthrate, low levels of literacy and mass unemployment. Boko Haram’s campaign has grown in intensity and scope all year. Attacks on the national police headquarters in Abuja in June and a suicide bombing at the United Nations building there in late August, which killed at least 23, signaled an expansion in the group’s focus. Experts viewed those attacks as worrisome indicators that Boko Haram was receiving training outside Nigeria, perhaps from Al Qaeda’s North African affiliate. The obvious religious overtone to the attacks on Christmas Day appeared to represent another dangerous shift in strategy. “This is a sign that they’ve MLB jerseys decided to try to ignite the Muslim-Christian fault line,” said Darren Kew, a Nigeria expert at the University of Massachusetts Boston. If so, it has ominous implications, because hundreds have died in clashes between Nigeria’s Muslims and Christians in recent years. That fight has taken place largely outside Boko Haram’s base in the north. “They are trying to expand from their roots,” said Mr. Kew, adding that until now, the group had “largely avoided antagonizing the Christians. This is a strategic choice on their part to broaden their offensive.” Catholic officials in Nigeria expressed concern Sunday about the Madala bombing. The White House also issued a statement deploring the violence. “It’s very worrying,” said Archbishop Ignatius A. Kaigama of Jos, where there was a smaller explosion at a church on Sunday. No casualties were reported, but the blast occurred in a violence-wracked city on the religious fault line between north and south. “With this happening, it’s a different dimension,” the archbishop said. A Boko Haram spokesman, identified as Abu Qaqa, claimed responsibility for the attacks in statements to the local news media.

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