Bombings in Nigeria claim at least 118 lives_美文

Bombings in Nigeria claim at least 118 lives

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Back-to-back bomb blasts killed at least 118 people and wounded 45 in the crowded business district of the central Nigerian city of Jos on Tuesday, in an attack that appeared to bear the hallmarks of Boko Haram insurgents, emergency services said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility. But Boko Haram, which has set off bombs across the north and center of Nigeria in an increasingly bloody campaign for an Islamic state, is seen as the prime suspect in what would rank among their deadliest attacks in five years of insurrection.

Boko Haram grabbed world headlines by abducting more than 200 schoolgirls on April 14 from the northeastern village of Chibok. Britain, the United States and France have pledged to help rescue them.

If the Jos attack was the handiwork of Boko Haram, it would show the militant group's growing reach in Africa's top oil-producing country, striking out beyond their heartland in Nigeria's semi-arid and weakly governed northeast. Several bombs have exploded outside that region over the past month.

It was also likely calculated to stoke civil strife in Nigeria's most combustible ethnic and sectarian tinderbox. Jos and the surrounding Plateau state have seen thousands killed in tit-for-tat violence between largely Christian Berom farmers and Muslim Fulani cattle herders over the past decade.

Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan swiftly condemned the attack, calling it a "tragic assault on human freedom" and condemning the perpetrators as "cruel and evil".