Death Comes to Nigeria (Again)

The Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram has staged another massive attack in Nigeria, their deadliest so far. More than 140 people were killed.

In the BBC news clip below, notice the party-line spin added by the reporter exonerating the “mainstream” majority of Muslims in Nigeria — as if he had a telepathic feed into the general mindset of Nigerian Muslims.

Many thanks to Vlad Tepes for uploading this video:


Below are excerpts from an article on the same topic in The Sydney Morning Herald:

Nigerian Blasts Death Toll Rises to 143

A coordinated attack by a radical Islamist sect in north Nigeria’s largest city has killed at least 143 people.

It is the extremist group’s deadliest assault since beginning its campaign of terror in Africa’s most populous nation.

Soldiers and police officers swarmed Kano’s streets as Nigeria’s president again promised the sect known as Boko Haram would “face the full wrath of the law.”

But the uniformed bodies of security agents that filled a Kano hospital mortuary again showed the sect can strike at will against the country’s weak central government.

Friday’s attacks hit police stations, immigration offices and the local headquarters of Nigeria’s secret police in Kano, a city of more than nine million people that remains an important political and religious centre in the country’s Muslim north.

A suicide bomber detonated a car loaded with powerful explosives outside a regional police headquarters, tearing its roof away and blowing out windows in a blast felt miles away as its members escaped jail cells there.

Authorities largely refused to offer casualty statistics as mourners began claiming the bodies of their loved ones to bury before sundown, following Islamic tradition.

However, a hospital official told The Associated Press at least 143 people were killed in the attack.

The toll could still rise, since other bodies could be held at other clinics and hospitals in the sprawling city.

State authorities enforced a 24-hour curfew in the city, with many remaining home as soldiers and police patrolled the streets and set up roadblocks. Gunshots echoed through some areas of the city into Saturday morning.

A Boko Haram spokesman using the nom de guerre Abul-Qaqa claimed responsibility for the attacks in a message to journalists Friday. He said the attack came because the state government refused to release Boko Haram members held by the police.

[…]

President Goodluck Jonathan also condemned an attack he said saw innocent people “brutally and recklessly cut down by agents of terror.”

“As a responsible government, we will not fold our hands and watch enemies of democracy, for that is what these mindless killers are, perpetrate unprecedented evil in our land,” Jonathan said in a statement.

“I want to reassure Nigerians ... that all those involved in that dastardly act would be made to face the full wrath of the law.”

But Jonathan’s government has repeatedly been unable to stop attacks by Boko Haram, whose name means “Western education is sacrilege” in the Hausa language of Nigeria’s north.

The group has carried out increasingly sophisticated and bloody attacks in its campaign to implement strict Shariah law and avenge the deaths of Muslims in communal violence across Nigeria, a multiethnic nation of more than 160 million people.

Authorities blamed Boko Haram for at least 510 killings last year alone, according to an AP count, including an August suicide bombing on the UN headquarters in the country’s capital Abuja. So far this year, the group has been blamed for at least 219 killings, according to an AP count.

Boko Haram recently said it specifically would target Christians living in Nigeria’s north, but Friday’s attack saw its gunmen kill many Muslims. In a recent video posted to the internet, Imam Abubakar Shekau, a Boko Harm leader, warned it would kill anyone who “betrays the religion” by being part of or sympathising with Nigeria’s government.

“I swear by Allah we will kill them and their killing will be nothing to us,” Shekau said. “It will be like going to prayers at 5am”