Worst Attack in Nigeria Capital Kills 75 in Rush Hour

Story by Bloomberg
Written by Elisha Bala-Gbogbo and Daniel Magnowski

The worst-ever bomb attack on Nigeria’s capital which killed at least 75 people has sparked concern Islamists are shifting their targets from the northeast to the center and south of Africa’s biggest oil producer.

President Goodluck Jonathan, who visited the scene, blamed the Islamist militant group Boko Haram for the car bomb that exploded at 6:55 a.m. local time yesterday in Nyanya district, about nine kilometers (5.6 miles) from the Abuja city center.

The death toll, which increased from 71 yesterday, will probably rise, Health Minister Onyebuchi Chukwu said today in an e-mailed statement. He put the number of wounded at 141.

“No figure can be given yet because pathologists are working to identify the number of dismembered bodies,” Chukwu said.

Security forces are fighting a four-year-old insurgency by Boko Haram, which has killed thousands of people in gun and bomb attacks in the country’s north and Abuja. With less than a year before general elections, the government is increasingly stretched in its efforts to quell violence across huge swathes of the West African nation, which has Africa’s biggest economy.

“Monday’s bombing was the first successful terrorist attack in the federal capital since 2011 and it has further raised concerns on the potential spread of the Islamist insurgency beyond its traditional strongholds in the North East,” Poole, U.K.-based risk consultancy Drum Cussac said in e-mailed comments today.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned the bombing. “The perpetrators of this attack, and those responsible for the continuing brutal attacks in the northeast of the country, must be brought to justice,” he said in an e-mailed statement late yesterday.

Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-14/worst-attack-in-nigeria-capital-kills-71-in-rush-hour.html