Suicide bombers target market in the city of Yola in Nigeria – 29 killed, 38 injured

A couple of suicide bombers blew themselves up in the main market of Yola city in Nigeria’s northeast and 29 persons were killed while another 38 were injured. Initial indications are that it was an attack by Boko Haram militants.
This has been reported in indianexpress.com dated 5 June 2015.

The injured are being treated in the hospitals in this city which is already overflowing with refugees from the conflict. The timing of the explosion coincided with the time when the merchants were downing the shutters and people were hurrying to make last-minute purchases while commuters were rushing to catch tricycle taxis to go home.
It was the first such attack on Yola and fingers of suspicion point at Boko Haram because two of the dead bodies were of the suicide bombers.
(Image courtesy wikimediacommons.org)

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13-year-old Nigerian girl refuses to bow to dictates of Boko Haram

#bokoharam #suicidebomber A 13-year-old Nigerian girl has refused to wear a suicide vest and bow to the dictates of Boko Haram. Her father had given her to the terror group but, even though she was forced to wear the belt, she did not detonate the device.
The girl has revealed that she was made to wear a bomb belt and taken to a market in Nigeria by the Boko Haram extremists but she refused to detonate the device. She told her captors that she had told her captors that she had no intention to be a suicide bomber.
It seems she had allowed them to strap the bomb on her because they threatened to bury her alive if she did not. After strapping her with the bomb, she was taken to a market in Kano, Nigeria's second largest city in the north, along with two other girls, who detonated the bombs.
As a result of the explosions, four people were killed on 10 December and Zahara'u, the girl, said that she was too scared to detonate the bomb when she saw the aftermath of what her counterparts had done. The girl was injured in the blasts and she managed to make her way to a hospital where police arrested her as she was undergoing treatment. The Boko Haram militant group has been increasingly using female suicide bombers.

Terrorism in Nigeria –Boko Haram strikes again, kidnaps 185 women and children

#BokoHaram Another incident of terrorism rocks Nigeria - Boko Haram insurgents are reported to have kidnapped at least 185 women and children, and killed 32 people in a raid in northeastern Nigeria.
The gunmen came in pickup trucks and attacked the village of Gumsuri, just north of Chibok – they shot down the men and herded away the women and children in the trucks. They also burned down the village by using petrol bombs.
The militants had stormed the village from two directions – that way, the local vigilantes who had repelled Boko Haram attacks over the course of the year, were caught by surprise.
It seems news of this attack took four days to emerge because of a serious lack of communication in the region – many telecommunications towers had been disabled by the militants in previous attacks.
Local officials came to know about the attack from residents who succeeded in fleeing out to Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state.
Boko Haram has been carrying out terror activities in northern Nigeria regularly since 2009 – they have attacked police, schools, churches and civilians, and bombed a number of government buildings. In April, the Boko Haram militants had kidnapped more than 200 schoolgirls from a school in Chibok and, while a few of the girls managed to escape, many have been sold into slavery.

More than 120 dead, 370 injured in bomb attack in mosque in Nigeria

It was another dreaded Friday for worshippers of Kano, the second largest city of Nigeria when suicide bombers and gunmen attacked the main mosque and left 120 dead with another 370 injured. The gunmen opened attack after the suicide bombers struck and the incident bears the hallmark of the Boko Haram militants.
Reports indicate that hundreds of worshippers had been gathering to listen to a sermon from the city's chief imam and prayers had got under way at around 2pm, local time.
As per a witness, two bombs exploded, one after the other, in the premises of the Grand Mosque seconds after the prayers began.
The mosque's leader is the Emir of Kano, the second highest Islamic authority in the country and he had recently urged that people in the north of Nigeria should take up arms against Boko Haram. However, it is not known as to whether he was present at the time the attack took place. The Islamist organization Boko Haram has been fighting a guerilla war to bring about a hardline Islamic state since 2009 and is responsible for the kidnap of more than 200 teenage girls from a school in the northern town of Chibok in April this year. The girls are still in captivity.
Due to such attacks, over 1.5 million Nigerians who have been displaced by Boko Haram have been flocking to refugee camps across the country's northeast to add to the woes of the administration because the facilities are overcrowded and there is also a shortage of supplies.
Right now, the world is in the grip of terrorism carried out by three major outfits al-Qaeda, Boko Haram and the ISIS – each of them has a different agenda. While al-Qaeda wages war against the US, the Boko Haram wants Nigerians to prevent western cultures from taking over and the ISIS wants a totally Islamic State where only Muslims can stay.
Of course, the attack of anything that is western culture is not new to Nigeria – it has been in India also where outfits like the Ram Sena in Bangalore and the Shiv Sena in Mumbai rears its head once in a while.