Islamic sect claims responsibility for Nigeria attacks

A picture taken on December 25, 2011 shows men looking at the wreckage of a car following a bomb blast at St Theresa Catholic Church outside the Nigerian capital Abuja on December 25, 2011. Hundreds of residents fled their homes on January 7, 2012 in a town in northeastern Nigeria in the wake of all-night gun battles between Islamists and security forces, police and residents said. PHOTO/ AFP | FILE

MAIDUGRI, Saturday

The Nigerian Islamic fundamentalists sect Boko Haram was responsible for the series of attacks and bomb blast in the Nigerian’s northern cities of Gombe, Damaturu, Maiduguri and Adamawa, its spokesman has said.

Abul-Qaqa, the spokesman of the sect disclosed in a telephone conversation with local media that the group was responsible for the Thursday and Friday’s attacks in the four cities where more than 20 people have been killed.

“We are extending our frontiers to other places in order to show that the declaration of state of emergency by the Nigerian federal government will not deter us. In fact we can always change our tactics. We can really go to wherever we want to go. For peace to return, the federal government must release all our brothers who have been incarcerated in various prisons,” he said.

Christians to vacate

He said the attack in Mubi, Adamawa State, was part of actualisation of the ultimatum given to Christians from southern part of the country to vacate Northern Nigeria.

“A group in the South threatened and started attacking northerners. The truth is that we would always confront whoever attacks our brothers,” the sect spokesman vowed.

A gun battle also ensued Friday between military troops and Islamic sect in another city northeast of the country.

Residents claimed sporadic gunshots were heard around a police station in Nassarawa ward and St Paul’s Catholic Church in Potiskum. 

(Xinhua)