Nigeria: Six people killed in twin attacks on newspaper offices
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.
At least six people have been killed in twin attacks on newspaper offices in two cities in Nigeria.
According to the Associated Press, a suicide bomber drove a car laden with explosives into the office of a major Nigerian newspaper in the capital city of Abuja on Thursday.
A rescue official told the Agence France Presse that three people died in the blast at ThisDay newspaper’s Abuja bureau.
Meanwhile, a building in the northern city of Kaduna, which housed ThisDay as well as The Moment and The Daily Sun newspapers, was also bombed Thursday, Reuters reports.
Three died in the Kaduna attack, according to the Associated Press.
Police and paramilitary forces have surrounded the Abuja premises. An office worker in the building next door to the newspaper offices told the BBC: “The ceiling of our building collapsed onto our computers because of the force of the blast.”
More from GlobalPost: Nigeria attacks in Plateau state kill five and injure ten
No group has claimed responsibility for the attacks, which come a day after five people were killed and ten injured in two separate attacks in central Nigeria.
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, while 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 match between Chelsea and Barcelona.
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.
Violent attacks carried out by the group – mainly in the north of the country – have killed more than 1,000 people since mid-2009.
More from GlobalPost: Boko Haram violence threatens nation
Every day, reporters and producers at The World are hard at work bringing you human-centered news from across the globe. But we can’t do it without you. We need your support to ensure we can continue this work for another year.
Make a gift today, and you’ll help us unlock a matching gift of $67,000!