ABUJA – A car bomb ripped through the United Nations’ headquarters in the Nigerian capital of Abuja yesterday, killing at least 18 people, in an attack reminiscent of a June blast claimed by a local radical Islamist group.
UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon said that the final casualty toll was likely to be considerable, and Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan ordered tighter security around the capital after what he called a “most despicable assault”.
Security sources and witnesses said the car rammed into the building and blew up, badly damaging parts of an office complex where close to 400 people normally work for UN agencies.
“We do not yet have precise casualty figures but they are likely to be considerable,” Mr Ban said, adding that the building housed 26 UN humanitarian and development agencies.
“This was an assault on those who devote their lives to helping others,” he said in a statment to reporters. “We condemn this terrible act, utterly.”
Body parts were strewn on the ground as emergency workers, soldiers and police swarmed around the building, cordoned roads and brought the wounded to hospital.
“Different people have been taken to different hospitals so we’re not sure of casualty figures. It is at least 18,” said Mike Zuokumor, Abuja police commissioner.
President Barack Obama condemned as “horrific” the attack.
“An attack on Nigerian and international public servants demonstrates the bankruptcy of the ideology that led to this heinous action,” Mr Obama said.
“The United States strongly supports the work of the United Nations and its lasting bond with the people of Nigeria, a bond that will only emerge stronger in the wake of this murderous act.”
No one claimed responsibility for the attack. However, one Abuja-based security source suspected the Nigerian Islamist group Boko Haram, whose strikes have been growing in intensity and spreading further afield, or al-Qaeda’s North African arm.
“This is very likely the work of Boko Haram and, or, AQIM and is a serious escalation in the security situation in Nigeria,” the security source said. “This is the worst thing that could have happened.”
In yesterday’s attack the car slammed through security gates of the UN complex, crashed into the basement and exploded, sending vehicles flying and setting the building ablaze.
“When the car got inside it went straight to the basement and exploded, killing people in reception, right and left,” said Abuja resident James John, who saw the attack.
“All the people in the basement were killed. Their bodies are littered all over the place,” said Ocilaje Michael, a UN employee at the complex.
The building was blackened from top to bottom. In places, walls were blown away and there were piles of debris.
Militant attacks in the oil-producing regions of southern Nigeria have subsided but the north has been hit by a round of bombings and killings by Islamist extremists.
Boko Haram, whose name translates from the local northern Hausa language as “Western education is sinful”, has been behind almost daily bombings and shootings, mostly targeting police in the northeast of Africa’s most populous nation. The group claimed responsibility for a June bomb attack on the Abuja police headquarters which bore similarities to yesterday’s bombing.
In the June attack, a car rammed through the gates of the police headquarters in the capital and exploded, killing the bomber and narrowly missing the chief of police. – (Reuters)