17th June, 2011
Nigeria’s Islamist sect, Boko Haram, has claimed responsibility for a suicide bomb attack on the police headquarters in Abuja, yesterday morning. The blast at the car park of the police killed two persons, including the suicide bomber.
The Boko Haram said their target was the police chief.
“We are responsible for the bomb attack on the police headquarters in Abuja which was to prove a point to all those who doubt our capability,” the group known as Boko Haram said late Thursday after the attack.
The powerful explosion, believed to the first suicide bombing by Islamist extremists in Nigeria, ripped through the police headquarters car park, killing a police officer and the bomber, wounding several others and destroying dozens of cars, according to police.
“It is unfortunate that we could not accomplish our mission because our target was the inspector-general of police, Hafiz Ringim,” the group said in a statement distributed anonymously in Nigeria’s northeastern city of Maiduguri where the sect is believed to be based.
Witnesses said the motorcade of a senior police officer had driven into the headquarters just minutes before the attack.
Boko Haram, sometimes called the Nigerian Taliban, had warned Wednesday of “fiercer” attacks saying it was angered by a police declaration that its days were “numbered.”
In the statement signed by spokesman Abu Zaid, the group said the police chief had recently been making “unguarded utterances to the effect that he will crush us in a matter of days.”
The sect this week admitted links with a foreign Islamist group connected to Al-Qaeda, but security experts earlier speculated that it had established ties with Islamists in north Africa. It said some of its members had just returned from training in Somalia.