Nigeria: 21 killed in shopping mall blast – Boko Haram suspected

Smoke billows from Emab Plaza in Abuja. PHOTO/Reuters

An explosion rocked a shopping mall in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, on Wednesday and police said at least 21 people have been killed.

Witnesses said body parts were scattered around the exit to Emab Plaza, in Abuja’s upscale Wuse 11 suburb. They said they saw at least 8 bodies in the same area. All spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

It is the latest in a series of violent attacks blamed on the Boko Haram Islamists.

Abuja is in the center of Nigeria and the militants have spread their attacks to the capital. Two separate explosions in Abuja in April killed more than 120 people and wounded about 200 at a busy bus station. Both were claimed by Boko Haram, which has threatened further attacks.

Boko Haram attracted international condemnation for the April mass abductions of more than 200 schoolgirls, and is blamed for this week’s abductions of another 91 people — 31 boys and 60 girls and women with toddlers as young as 3.

Nigeria’s military and government claim to be winning the war in the 5-year-old insurgency but the tempo and deadliness of attacks has increased this year.

Boko Haram wants to install an Islamic state in Nigeria, a West African nation whose 170 million people are almost equally divided between Muslims who are dominant in the north and Christians in the south.

Source: Associated Press