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Nigeria church blast kills at least 12 Suicide car bomber kills at least 15 in Nigeria church attack
(about 14 hours later)
A suicide bomber has driven a car full of explosives into a church in northern Nigeria on Sunday, killing at least 12 people, according to witnesses. A suicide car bomber drove into a church compound in northern Nigeria on Sunday and detonated his explosives as worshippers left an early morning service, killing at least 15 people and wounding dozens more, officials and witnesses said.
Security forces at a nearby roadblock said the bomber forced his vehicle through the checkpoint and drove into the church in Yelwa, on the outskirts of Bauchi city. A Reuters reporter at the scene saw 12 bodies being removed from the building. The bomber targeted the Living Faith church, in a neighbourhood near the airport in Bauchi, the capital of Bauchi state. The timed blast caught many people outside the church without any cover to protect themselves from the explosion, causing heavy casualties, witnesses said.
Samuel Etudu, who was outside the building when the explosion occurred, said: "I was just in the area when I heard a huge blast. The sound was so loud, my ears are still ringing." At least 15 people died in the blast, not counting the suicide bomber, the Nigerian Red Cross said, while more than 30 people suffered injuries.
It was not clear who was responsible for the attack, although churches have been targeted by the militant Islamists Boko Haram this year. The group are increasingly using suicide bombers to carry out attacks, and have been blamed for hundreds of killings over the past two years. Bauchi state police commissioner Mohammed Ladan said security personnel stationed near the church compound stopped the car from getting any closer to worshippers than it did.
Gunmen killed at least 15 people and wounded many more on 29 April after opening fire on a university theatre used by Christian worshippers in Kano, the main city in northern Nigeria. The powerful blast from the car destroyed part of the Living Faith church, sending walls of the building crashing down on worshippers still inside. Others suffered burns in the blast.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, though the attack comes as Nigeria faces a growing wave of sectarian violence carried out by a radical Islamist sect known as Boko Haram. Boko Haram, whose name means "Western education is sacrilege" in the Hausa language of Nigeria's predominantly Muslim north, has been blamed for killing more than 530 people this year alone, according to an Associated Press count. The sect's targets have included churches, often attacked by suicide car bombers.
Boko Haram, which speaks to journalists through telephone conference calls at times of its choosing, could not be immediately reached for comment on Sunday. The group has been largely quiet since claiming a suicide car bombing and another attack at offices of the Nigerian newspaper ThisDay on 26 April that killed at least seven people.
Nigeria, a nation of more than 160 million people, is split between a largely Muslim north and Christian south.