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Tag: islamist extremists
21 Killed In Nigerian Shopping Mall Blast

21 Killed In Nigerian Shopping Mall Blast

By Robyn Dixon, Los Angeles Times

JOHANNESBURG — Violence hit the Nigerian capital of Abuja on Wednesday when a bomb blast at a shopping mall rocked the upscale Wuse 2 neighborhood, sending a pall of black smoke into the sky and killing 21 people.

Police confirmed that 21 died and 17 others were injured in the explosion at the entrance to the Emab Plaze shopping mall.

The explosive device was placed in a group of vehicles near the mall, according to witnesses cited in local media. Among the dead were small street vendors who were selling fruit, food and other goods nearby.

The blast follows two deadly bomb attacks an Abuja in April that killed 120 people, both of them in the neighborhood of Nyanya, on the outskirts of the city.

No group claimed responsibility for Wednesday’s attack but suspicions fell on Boko Haram, the violent Islamist group that opposes Western education, democracy and Western culture.

The insurgency has turned the country’s north into a war zone, closed down schools, devastated the northern economy and has killed 12,000 people since 2009, mainly in the north.

Police spokesman Frank Mba told journalists Wednesday it was too early to confirm the number of casualties.

“Our most important assignment now is to secure live, secure the crime scene,” Mba said, speaking at the scene of the explosion.

The blast follows a series of bomb attacks in different cities and towns across Nigeria, including an attack Monday at a medical college in Kano that killed eight people.

Last week, at least 14 soccer fans were killed in an attack on a soccer viewing venue where men and boys were watching a World Cup match in Damaturu, capital of Yobe state in the north. In May, 130 people died in twin explosions at a market in Jos, in central Nigeria.

Meanwhile dozens of villages in north eastern Nigeria have faced attacks in recent months, killing hundreds.

Nigerian authorities seem incapable of crushing the insurgency and restoring security in the north and other parts of Nigeria. They have also failed to rescue 210 schoolgirls from Chibok village in the north east, kidnapped by Boko Haram in April, focusing attention on corruption and incompetence in Nigeria’s military.

AFP Photo/Pius Utomi Ekpei

Suicide Bomber Strikes Nigeria World Cup Screening, Killing 14

Suicide Bomber Strikes Nigeria World Cup Screening, Killing 14

By Robyn Dixon, Los Angeles Times

JOHANNESBURG — A suicide bomber driving a three-wheeler taxi detonated a blast at an open-air World Cup viewing venue in northern Nigeria on Tuesday night, killing 14 people, according to police.

Police Assistant Superintendent Nathan Cheghan told the Associated Presst that 26 others were wounded in the attack in the town of Damaturu. There were fears the number of dead could rise, with many seriously injured victims reported.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the bombing in the Yobe state capital as people watched Brazil play Mexico, but suspicions fell on the Islamist militia Boko Haram or a similar Islamist splinter group.

The police commissioner for Yobe state, Sanusi Ruf’ai, said the attack happened at about 8:15 p.m. local time, shortly after the soccer match began.

The bomb blast follows several similar attacks in northern Nigeria in recent months. Just over two weeks ago, 14 people were killed in a bomb attack on a bar in the town of Mubi in Adamawa state, where people were watching soccer. In May, three people were killed at a soccer viewing venue in Jos, the capital of Plateau state. In April, two people died when gunmen opened fire on a soccer-viewing venue in Yobe state.

In soccer-mad Nigeria, young men often crowd into bars, video halls and mass open-air soccer-screening venues to watch games live on large screens. For many who lack cable TV at home, it is the only way to see World Cup games and other major soccer matches live.

But Nigerian authorities have warned that venues screening soccer matches could be targeted by extremists who see the game as un-Islamic.

Authorities in Adamawa and Plateau states and the Federal Capital Territory recently banned screenings of World Cup matches in public venues because of the risk of attacks. Police in other areas have warned owners of such venues to take extra security precautions.

Yobe, Borno and Adamawa states have been under a state of emergency for more than a year as the Nigerian government grapples with an insurgency that has killed thousands of people in recent years, shut down schools and caused thousands of farmers to desert their land and villagers to evacuate their homes.

Boko Haram kidnapped more than 300 girls from Chibok village in April, and the ensuing campaign for their release, under the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls, focused global attention on the militant group.

Boko Haram’s attacks have increasingly targeted civilians. In an attack on a boarding school in Yobe state in February, dozens of school boys were shot in their beds, burned alive or had their throats cut. Hundreds of schoolteachers have been killed in northern Nigeria since last year. Markets and bus stations have been hit as well.

The group, fighting for an Islamic state across Nigeria, opposes Western education and culture, which it sees as the products of corrupt infidels. The insurgency has deepened divisions between the mainly Muslim north and mainly Christian south in Africa’s most populous nation, which has about 170 million people.

Soccer-viewing venues make easy targets for terror groups in Africa. During the World Cup in 2010, more than 70 people died in an attack by the Somali terror group al-Shabab in the Ugandan capital of Kampala. The U.S. Embassy in Kampala recently issued a warning to avoid crowded soccer-viewing venues in Uganda because of the risk of attack.

In an attack by gunmen Sunday in the Kenyan town of Mpeketoni, people watching a World Cup match at a local venue were among the victims. About 60 people died in attacks Sunday and Monday on Mpeketoni and nearby villages, not far from the tourist area of Lamu on the northeastern Kenyan coast.

Both Kenya and Somalia have faced attacks by Al Shabab because of their military presence in Somalia, although Kenyan authorities blamed local political networks for the attacks earlier this week.

AFP Photo/Samir Bol

Militants Kill Dozens In Hours-Long Siege On Kenyan Town

Militants Kill Dozens In Hours-Long Siege On Kenyan Town

By Kate Linthicum and Joseph Akwiri, Los Angeles Times

NAIROBI, Kenya — A crowd of people gathered to watch a World Cup soccer match were among the targets of militants during a deadly five-hour siege on a small town on Kenya’s coast.

Meshack Kimani said he was watching the game in a video hall in the town of Mpeketoni Sunday when attackers stormed in, shooting. They killed about 10 men before moving on to attack other parts of town, said Kimani, who survived by hiding behind a door.

At least 50 people were killed in the brazen assault on Mpeketoni, a predominantly Christian town near the island of Lamu, according to the Kenya Red Cross.

Police and eyewitnesses said attackers armed with guns and explosives hijacked two buses and then rampaged through town, striking a police station, the video hall and several hotels. The attackers roamed neighborhoods, too, entering homes, shooting male inhabitants and setting fires, according to survivors. Women and children were spared, and many fled into the forest, survivors said.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack. Local police and officials in Kenya’s Interior Ministry said they were investigating whether it was planned by the Shabab, an al-Qaida-linked Somali militant group, or another group. The Shabab, which carried out last year’s deadly assault on Nairobi’s Westgate shopping mall, has vowed violence as payback for Kenya’s decision to send troops to Somalia in 2011.

Sunday’s incident was the latest in a string of attacks in Kenya, including a series of grenade attacks in the coastal resort town of Mombasa and twin bus bombings in Nairobi last month, which killed 10. The incidents have hit Kenya’s tourism industry, with the United States and Britain issuing travel alerts warning citizens of potential terrorist attacks.

The assault in Mpeketoni, where many people work on farms, was not directly aimed at tourists, although the town is a short distance from Lamu, an island popular with vacationing ex-patriots.

The attackers arrived in town just after 8:30 p.m., police said, and then split up to carry out simultaneous assaults on targets throughout the town.

Issah Birido, 28, who said he survived by hiding in a tree, said the attackers were dressed in army fatigues and were shouting in Somali. “After they attacked the area, they went around town shooting in the air and chanting slogans,” he said. “It seemed like they had taken the whole town hostage,” Birido said, adding that he believed local police may have fled.

Leonard Omollo, a police commander in Lamu County said at least one police officer was killed Sunday. He said the assailants left the town at around 1 a.m. None have been arrested.

The militants only targeted men, according to Omollo and others.

Mpeketoni resident Somoko Islam, 57, who was at work at the time of the siege, said his son was killed when they stormed his home.

On Monday morning, Islam said, police arrived in his neighborhood to collect the dead. “They came with a truck, but the truck could not even carry all the bodies,” he said.

Muiruri Kinyanjui, of the Kenya Red Cross, said the death toll may rise. Dozens of people were seriously wounded, he said, and many more residents cannot be accounted for. He said some residents who fled to the woods were coming back into town gradually Monday, and were being provided food, water and counseling.

Photo via AFP