Boko Haram ; Expect more deadly attacks

Islamic sect, Boko Haram has threatened to carry out more attacks, a day after a series of blasts and gun battles claimed by the group killed more than 100 people in the country’s northeast, the Nigerian Red Cross has said.


Ibrahim Bulama, an official from the humanitarian organisation, said on Sunday that the death toll is expected to rise as local clinics and hospitals tabulate the casualty figures from Friday’s attacks in Damaturu, the capital of rural Yobe state.

A spokesman for the Islamist armed group, using the name Abul-Qaqa, promised “more attacks are on the way”, speaking hours after witnesses reported “scenes of carnage”.

The US Embassy in Nigeria has issued an emergency warning to its citizens living there that bomb attacks could be possible at luxury hotels in the capital Abuja.

Boko Haram, which means “Western education is sacrilege”, has claimed responsibility for previous attacks and the latest was the deadliest since the group attacked a UN building in Abuja in August, killing at least 20 people.

“We will continue attacking federal government formations until security forces stop their excesses on our members and vulnerable civilians,” Abul-Qaqa said in an interview with the the Daily Trust, the newspaper of record across Nigeria’s Muslim north.

Suleimon Lawal, the police commissioner of Damaturu, told Al Jazeera a suicide bomber drove a vehicle apparently laden with explosives into a building housing the anti-terrorist court.

Lawal said the attack killed 53 people but he did not disclose how many among the casualties were security officials.

“The explosives rocked the building and there were casualties. Two of them [suicide bombers] perished in the bomb,” he said.

Lawal insisted the group was not gaining an upper hand and vowed that it would be crushed.

“My strategy is a security strategy [that] I cannot disclose on air. So as they’re not [Boko Haram] disclosing their security strategy, I don’t think it is safe for me to tell the whole world what I am doing,” he said.

The violence followed a series of attacks reported in the neighbouring cities of Maiduguri and Potiskum on Friday afternoon.

“There’s that fear that something might possibly happen again,” Ibrahim Bulama, a spokesman for the Nigerian Red Cross, said.