Sorrow and horror at Jos's Terminus market – now a smouldering bomb site

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/21/sorrow-horror-jos-terminus-market-two-bombs-boko-haram

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Usman Haruna arrived at his workplace in the central Nigerian city of Jos to find an unrecognisable wreck after twin bomb blasts ripped through the market where he had worked for twelve years.

"I haven't been able to sleep all night, I was just praying it was a terrible dream," said the 42-year-old shoe seller, who was one of few traders who dared return to the smouldering scene on Wednesday morning. "Today I just feel really sad. I've lost my livelihood and even worse is I lost 10 of my colleagues."

Haruna's colleagues – including a pregnant mother – were among at least 118 killed and 56 injured after back-to-back blasts tore through the busy Terminus area late on Tuesday afternoon. Rescue workers said the death toll is likely to climb. The attacks on the teeming metropolis took place as at least 30 were killed by gunmen in remote north-eastern villages.

Abdulsalam Mohammed, of Nigeria's national emergency management agency, told the Guardian: "The fire workers are still removing the rubble, there are collapsed buildings and people could have been trapped. We are also waiting for the right machinery to begin the heavy lifting, and there could be more casualties once that is done."

No group has claimed responsibility, but the blast is believed to be the work of Boko Haram, Islamists who have recently escalated their five-year insurgency to carve a caliphate in northern Nigeria, and kidnapped more than 300 schoolgirls from a remote north-eastern school in April. In the past month, the group has set off two bombs in the capital, Abuja, and another in the country's second city, Kano.

Late Tuesday Boko Haram gunmen also stormed through two settlements near Chibok, the village where the schoolgirls were kidnapped last month. Locals said at least 30 were killed in Alagarno and Shawa as the militants fired on fleeing civilians and razed parts of the village.

A resident, Haruna Bitrus, said the attack had not provoked any response from an apparently beefed-up military presence in the area, part of three regions where a year-long state of emergency was extended this month. Nigeria's military has been stretched by attempts to police a vast, arid area in which fleet-footed insurgents have been able to make lightning raids.

"While the gunmen were fleeing, three of their vehicles broke down and they have stayed behind to fix them. They were there up to this morning" with no response from the military, Bitrus told AFP.

Jos, a city that has long been a flashpoint for ethnic tensions exacerbated by tensions over resources and power, has largely escaped the violence in Boko Haram's north-eastern strongholds. But the sect has tried to ignite a sectarian war in the religiously mixed, central city, including through a series of church bombs on Christmas Day 2011. In 2008, religious clashes left 700 dead; the most recent sectarian violence in 2010 claimed at least 200.

In an indication of what simmering tensions could bring if unleashed, a mob of Christian youths in Jos's Tina neighbourhood set up a roadblock yesterday where they attacked at least three Muslim residents, beating one into a coma.

"They were angry, misguided youths and they took it out on innocent people. The Boko Haram have not yet designed a bomb that will kill only Christians," said Hassan Usman, whose brother was in coma with serious head trauma.

Text messages circulating in Jos showed horrifying scenes of damage and carnage. One picture appeared to show a mother cradling her child, the pair burnt almost beyond recognition.

The recent upsurge in violence has led to anger at the government's lacklustre response to the threat, prompting it to seek assistance from the US, UK and Israel, who are expected to help locate the abducted school girls and provide counter-terrorism training programs.

In a summit in Paris last week, the west African nations of Cameroon, Chad and Niger agreed to each contribute a battalion to form a border patrol troop based around the arid Sahelian belt, large swaths of which have fallen under the control of Islamist terrorists in recent years.

"President Jonathan considers these measures very useful aspects of the concerted international effort to combat terrorism and put an end to the Boko Haram menace," the presidency said in a statement.