Boko Haram claims north Nigeria suicide attack

The radical Islamist group Boko Haram has claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s suicide bomb attack on an army base near the northern Nigerian city of Kaduna.

A spokesman for the militant sect told Nigeria’s Daily Trust newspaper that it had carried out the attack, according to The Washington Post.

The BBC reported that a man wearing a military uniform managed to infiltrate the base of the Nigerian army’s 1st Mechanised Division, one of the country’s most fortified complexes, and blew himself up outside a barracks.

An army spokesman said that although soldiers had fired on the man as he attempted to drive a car into the heart of the barracks, he still managed to detonate explosives contained inside the vehicle.

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Boko Haram also claimed responsibility for an attempted attack yesterday on an air force base. There was a third explosion near a bridge in Kaduna, which counts several retired military officers among its residents.

The group has been blamed for the deaths of hundreds in bomb and gun attacks in northern Nigeria, according to Reuters. Its name means “western education is forbidden,” and it wants sharia law to be more widely applied. It claimed responsibility for coordinated attacks in Nigeria’s second-biggest city of Kano on January 20, which left at least 185 dead.

Military officials said that only the bomber was killed in yesterday’s attack, although witnesses saw soldiers in blood-drenched uniforms, according to the Washington Post.

Boko Haram’s spokesman denied yesterday that the group had sent a video message broadcast Tuesday on the state-run Nigerian Television authority, in which the Islamists purportedly accepted an offer of peace negotiations with the country’s central government. 

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