Nigeria - A suicide bomber rammed his vehicle packed with explosives into the UN headquarters yesterday, destroying several floors in a thunderous blast that killed at least 18 people, witnesses and officials said.
Boko Haram, a shadowy Nigerian Islamist insurgency group with possible links to Al Qaeda’s affiliates in the region, claimed responsibility for the attack in a telephone call to the BBC. If confirmed, it would signal a significant leap in the scope of Boko Haram’s focus, which until now had taken aim exclusively at domestic targets as part of an ill-defined aim to establish strict Islamic law in the country’s north.
The Nigerian government has come under repeated attack by Boko Haram in the north and by militants in the south. Foreign oil companies and their workers have also been a common target of southern insurgents, who demand a greater share in the nation’s oil profits. But the deadly strike on the United Nations, the first on its offices in Nigeria, was a surprising turn.
“This act provides a new dimension to threats on the domestic front,’’ said Joy Ogwu, Nigeria’s ambassador to the United Nations, who called the attack a “transnational crime’’ and urged renewed efforts to fight terrorism in her country.
If indeed the work of Boko Haram, the attack lends substance to new concerns of officials and analysts that an inward-looking organization is increasingly adopting the methods and aims of global terrorists. The bombing, capping months of small-scale explosions and assassinations, mostly in the country’s north, is the most brazen attack yet.
“The logic of Boko Haram has been essentially inward looking,’’ said Chidi Anselm Odinkalu of the Open Society Justice Initiative, in Abuja. “To now seek to attack the UN entirely departs from the narrative they have so far constructed. That’s the most worrying thing about this. It makes Boko Haram an international threat.’’
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