Nigeria attacks in Plateau state kill five and injure ten
The site of the Easter bombing in Kaduna on April 8, 2012. A car bomb blast outside a church in northern Nigeria on Easter Sunday killed at least 41 people and put the country on alert over fears of further attacks, rescue officials and residents said. Motorcycle taxi drivers and passers-by caught much of the blast.
Five people have been killed and ten injured in two separate attacks in central Nigeria.
According to the BBC, unknown gunmen shot dead five residents of the small village of Rim, 50 kilometers south of the restive city of Jos in Plateau state, and injured another in an overnight attack.
Earlier, nine people were injured in a mainly Christian northern suburb of Jos after an explosion was triggered outside a venue where soccer fans had gathered to watch a semi-final showdown between Chelsea and Barcelona, the Agence France Presse reports.
More from GlobalPost: Boko Haram violence threatens nation
Jos – the capital of Plateau state, which rests on the fault time between Nigeria’s predominantly Muslim north and Christian and animist south – has been the epicenter of inter-communal violence and Islamist militant attacks.
According to the Associated Press, the government of Plateau is controlled by Christian politicians and Muslims are not legally recognized as citizens, blocking them from employment in a region where tourism and mining have collapsed in recent decades.
While no group has claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s blast, bars, public places and churches have become regular targets for attacks by the fundamentalist Muslim sect Boko Haram, whose name means ‘Western education is forbidden’ and who want to establish Sharia in Nigeria, Reuters reports.
Violent attacks carried out by the group – mainly in the north of the country – have killed more than 1,000 people since mid-2009, the Agence France Presse reports.
More from GlobalPost: Boko Haram attacks on schools criticized by Human Rights Watch
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