KANO (Reuters) – Gun and bomb attacks by Islamist insurgents in the northern Nigerian city of Kano last week killed at least 178 people, a hospital doctor said on Sunday, underscoring the daunting challenge President Goodluck Jonathan now faces to prevent his country sliding further into chaos.
A coordinated series of bomb blasts and shooting sprees mostly targeting police stations on Friday sent panicked residents of Nigeria’s second biggest city of more than 10 million people running for cover.
The scale of the carnage makes this by far the deadliest strike claimed by Boko Haram, a shadowy Islamist sect that started out as a clerical movement opposed to western education but 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 following Friday’s attacks, citing records from his own and the other main hospital of Nasarawa.
“There could be more, because some bodies have not yet come in and others were collected early.”
Boko Haram has been blamed for killing hundreds of people in increasingly sophisticated bombings and shootings, mostly targeting security forces, establishment figures and more recently Christians, in country split roughly evenly between them and Muslims.
Apart from a handful of forays into the capital Abuja, the sect’s energies have been concentrated in the majority Muslim north, far from the oil producing facilities along the southern coast that keep Africa’s second biggest economy afloat.
Explosions struck two churches in the northern city of Bauchi on Sunday, witnesses said, destroying one of them completely, although there were no immediate reports of casualties.
Jonathan, a Christian southerner who helped broker a deal that largely ended an insurgency by militants in the oil-rich southeast, has been criticized for failing to grasp the gravity of the crisis unfolding in the north, and of treating it as a pure security issue that will fizzle out by itself.
UN CONDEMNS ATTACKS
The government has announced a dusk-to-dawn curfew in Kano, an ancient city that was once part of an Islamic caliphate trading riches on caravan routes connecting sub-Saharan Africa with the Mediterranean.
Worsening insecurity has led some to question whether Nigeria isn’t sliding into civil war, 40 years after the secessionist Biafra conflict killed over a million people, though few think an all-out war splitting the country into two or more pieces is a likely outcome.
A spokesman for the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned the attacks in a statement.
“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,” it said.
“The Secretary-General also expresses his hope for swift and transparent investigations into these incidents that lead to bringing the perpetrators to justice.”
European powers and the African Union have also condemned the attacks.
Boko Haram became active around 2003 in the remote, northeastern state of Borno, on the threshold of the Sahara, but its attacks have spread into other northern states, including Yobe, Kano, Bauchi and Gombe.
Boko Haram, a Hausa term meaning “Western education is sinful,” is loosely modeled on Afghanistan’s Taliban, but analysts say the anger it channels reflects a perception that north has been marginalized from oil riches concentrated in the south.
The sect originally said it wanted sharia, Islamic law, to be applied more widely across Nigeria but its aims appear to have changed. Recent messages from its leaders have said it is attacking anyone who opposes it, at present mainly police, the government and Christian groups.
It has become increasingly deadly in the last few months.
At least 65 people were killed in the northeast Nigerian city of Damaturu, Yobe state, in a spate of gun and bomb attacks in November.
A bomb attack on a Catholic church just outside the capital Abuja on Christmas Day, claimed by Boko Haram, killed 37 people and wounded 57.
In a Reuters interview in late December, National Security Adviser General Owoye Andrew Azazi are considering making contact with moderate members of shadowy sect via “back channels,” even though explicit talks are officially ruled out.
The only problem with your argument is that i only see one religion killing people daily on a global basis; guess who?
A spokesman for the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned the attacks in a statement.
“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,” it said.
“The Secretary-General also expresses his hope for swift and transparent investigations into these incidents that lead to bringing the perpetrators to justice.”
European powers and the African Union have also condemned the attacks.
Instead of just condeming the attacks do something about it. This whole religion bullshit needs to stop. There is nothing wrong with believing in a higher power. We all need spirituality but the killing of people based on religious ideals is just wrong. This is a bunch of old men set in their ways pushing the youth (who are desparate) out to do their dirty work. They twist these religions’ doctrines to there own benefit. Now peopel jump and say all muslims are evil and want to take over the world and oh all christians feel that their way is the only way. Why can’t we all just be and live in peace embracing each others cultures and faith instead of condemnation. Peace and love goes a long way people. All this energy spent on killing and harming each other can be channelled into nation building through out the continent. We have som much potential and will only realize and capitalize on it when this bullshit ends.
ONE LOVE
Don’t you just love the “Religion of Peace”? The world is getting peaceful every day due to the “Religion of Peace”..Peace to all non-muslims who wants to stop islm.
No reason for you to apologize. I share your anger. The same liberals who were so vocal about apartheid in SA have nothing to day about the slaughter and genocide of black Christians in Africa by muslims.
As for your children, how is it bigoted to abhor an evil ideology responsible for the mass slaughter of millions?
Perhaps, you are right and yet, strangely, I do not believe it as this is going on world wide.
‘Islamists kill 178 Christians in Nigeria’, this heading is misleading. it shows that only Christians were targeted and killed. After all, the criminals respect no religion. It is Kano remember,a densely populated Muslim state, from all indication more Muslims were killed than Christians, unlike what the report portrays.
Strange how every minute there is knee jerk reaction for much lesser events, involving no injury or death, in Israel from US Obama white house, UK, EU and UN and yet we never hear a word about all these killings. Apparently these deaths dont even warrant a how do you do. Of course saudi money is backing these killings on behalf of islam and also paying off politicians and universities in US and EU. every day we hear of this or that is not helping peace when the same mouth can be used to condemn slaughter. This is the smoking gun of anti semitism: double standards and dis proportionality. its time israel told them all to piss off
As Bob Dylan once wrote: “The answer my friend is blowing in the wind”.
I’m still angry at Dubya that he didn’t obliterate Khartoum for its Islamic genocide of Christians in South Sudan. I’m angry at my kids who think I am a bigot because i think Islam is evil. I am angry at fellow Christians who don’t care about the fate of my third world fellow believers. I am angry at the mainstream anti-semitic press which will ignore this but give prominence to apartment building in Jerusalem.
Sorry everyone. My rant for the day.
What’s an “Islamist”?
Is it naughty-naughty to say “Musulman”?
So what would be the reason the media is not all over this and calling it what it is; genocide? In about 20 countries all over the world Islam is in an open war with Christians and there is barely a peep in the media. Can you imagine what would be said if this were some white organization committing genocide against blacks?
What will it take to make governments understand that appeasing jihadists can only lead to disaster? There is no such thing as moderate jihadists.