Post date: Aug 26, 2011 12:9:18 PM
A bomb blast ripped through the United Nations offices in the Nigerian capital of Abuja on Friday (August 26) as a car rammed into the building, and witnesses said they had seen a number of dead bodies being carried from the site.
ABUJA, NIGERIA (AUGUST 26, 2011) REUTERS - A medical official said they had 10 dead and there could be more.
One security source in Abuja said he suspected an attack either by Boko Haram, a Nigerian radical Islamist sect, or the North African arm of al Qaeda. Boko Haram's attacks are growing in intensity and spreading further afield.The U.N. building was blacked from top to bottom and the remains of a car had fallen into the basement. Soldiers, firefighters and rescue workers swarmed over the area.
A side wall of the building could be seen with a gaping hole in it.
Ocilaje Michael, a member of the U.N. staff working at the Abuja building, said he had seen a number of dead bodies after the explosion.
A number of ambulances could be seen rushing from the site.
Boko Haram, whose name translates from the local northern Hausa language as "Western education is sinful", has been behind almost daily bombings and shootings, mostly targeting police in the northeast of Africa's most populous nation.
Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb operates in neighbouring Niger and has kidnapped foreign workers there. However, it was also suspected of kidnapping a Briton and an Italian in Nigeria earlier this year