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Nigeria working to restore calm in the north: Christmas bomb suspect arrested
But officials stopped short of designating Boko Haram itself as a terrorist group.
The three designated members are Abubakar Shekau — widely believed to lead Boko Haram’s main Islamist cell; Abubakar Adam Kambar and Khalid al-Barnawi, alleged to have links to both Boko Haram and Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.
The US designation freezes any US assets they may have and bars US citizens from “engaging in transactions with or for the benefit of these individuals,” a statement said.
The violence in Kaduna state began on Sunday with suicide attacks at three churches that killed at least 16 people and sparked reprisals by Christian mobs, who burned mosques and killing dozens of Muslims.
Boko Haram claimed responsibility for the church attacks.
The group has been blamed for bomb and gun attacks, mainly in Nigeria’s northeast, that have claimed more than 1,000 lives since mid-2009.
It claimed responsibility for last August’s suicide attack on UN headquarters in Abuja that killed 25 people, as well as a suicide attack on the Abuja office of one of the country’s most prominent newspapers.
This latest surge in violence has sparked fears of further reprisals and wider conflict in the country of some 160 million people, roughly divided between a mainly Muslim north and predominantly Christian south.
Boko Haram has killed more than 1,000 people in Nigeria since mid-2009.
Copyright 2012 AFP
