Car Bomb Hits UN Headquarters In Nigeria; At Least 18 Dead

A car bomb tore the United Nations headquarters in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, on Friday, killing at least 18 people in an attack claimed the explosion in June to commemorate the local radical sect.

The Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned the attack. “We have no exact figures of casualties is likely to be substantial,” he said, adding that the building housed 26 of the UN humanitarian agencies and development.

“This was an attack on those who devote their lives to helping others,” Ban said in a statement to journalists. “We condemn this abominable act, totally.”

The security sources and witnesses, the car struck the building and exploded, badly damaging part of an office complex, where nearly 400 people normally work for UN agencies.

Body parts were scattered on the ground that the rescuers, soldiers and police swarmed around the building, cordoned off the streets and rushed the injured to hospital.

“Different people were taken to different hospitals, we are not sure of the victims. It is at least 18, “said Mike Zuokumor, Abuja, police commissioner.

No time to take responsibility for the attack. However, a security source in Abuja Nigeria-based Islamic group suspected Boko Haram, whose strikes have increased in intensity and spread further, or Al-Qaeda in North Africa arm.

“This is very probably the work of Haram, and Boko, or AQIM (al-Qaeda Islamic Maghreb), and is a serious escalation of the security situation in Nigeria,” the security source said. “This is the worst thing that could happen.”

In the car the attack on Friday slammed the doors of the complex security of the United Nations crashed in the basement and exploded, sending cars flying and set fire to the building.

“When the car was in it went straight to the basement and exploded, killing people at the reception, right and left,” said James Jean on the residents of Abuja, who witnessed the attack. “The building, the ground floor of the heights, was fire and smoke. I saw six bodies were carried out. I can not believe.”

“Everyone in the basement were all killed. Their bodies are floating everywhere. I saw five dead bodies, “said Michael Ocilaje, a UN worker in the complex.

The building was blackened from top to bottom. In some places, the walls were washed away, and there were piles of debris from the explosion.

SIMILAR ATTACK

Militant attacks in oil-producing countries in the southern regions of Nigeria were reduced, but the North has undergone a round of bombings and assassinations in lamilaiset.

Boko Haram, whose name translated from local language Hausa of the north as “Western education is sin” was behind the bombings and shootings almost daily, mostly against police in the northeastern town of Africa nation.

The group has claimed responsibility for a bomb attack in June in the parking lot at police headquarters in Abuja, which had similarities with the explosion Friday at the UN building.

In June, attacks, a car rammed through the gates of police headquarters in the capital, and exploded, killing the bomber and he missed the chief of police.

Boko Haram is primarily addressed to the police and fire bombs, the remote north-east of Nigeria, which is bordered by Cameroon, Chad and Niger, but the goals are increasing.

President Goodluck Jonathan has set up a committee to investigate the sect and the police and army officers have made dozens of arrests and engage team members in shootings in the last two weeks.

The presidency was unavailable for comment. But security sources and diplomats are more concerned than Boko Haram has ties to more organized groups outside of Nigeria.

These include Al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb, which operates across the Niger border, and kidnapped foreign workers there. However, it was also suspected of kidnapping of a Briton and an Italian in Nigeria earlier this year.

In December 2007, car bombing of the UN building in Algiers have killed at least 41 people, including 17 UN staff. In 2003, 15 employees and seven others died in a bomb attack against the United Nations building in Baghdad.

London, Henry Wilkinson, Deputy Director Janusian Risk Consultants, told Reuters in an attack on the Haram Boko suggested that the church had developed into an Islamic group in such a way that threatens international objectives in Nigeria.

“This attack Western organizations rapidly and many companies to reassess the threat the group poses,” he said.

Tags: Abuja, Al-Qaeda Organization in the Islamic Maghreb, Ban Ki-moon, bokoharam, Goodluck Jonathan, Nigeria, United Nations, United Nations Headquarters