26th February, 2012
Two suicide bombers drove an explosives packed Volkswagen Bora car into a church in Nigeria’s volatile central city of Jos on Sunday and killed three people, church leaders told AFP.
According to the Punch online, the bombers were dressed in army uniform.
The attack is the latest in a country grappling with what have become almost daily assaults, most of them blamed on the Islamic fundamentalist sect, Boko Haram.
Church workers said a car forced its way through the gate during an early morning service.
“We were in the church during the time of worship and a suicide bomber forced himself into the church, through the gate,and the bomb exploded,” John Haruna, the reverend of the Church of Christ in Nigeria (COCIN), told AFP.
Another church member who is also an activist with the Christian human rights organisation Stefanos Foundation gave a similar account.
“It was suicide bomber, he drove his car into the church, approaching the pulpit and it exploded. Three members of the church died and 10 are injured,” Mark Lipdo, said.
He said pieces of human flesh littered the church premises. One of the bombers died, the other was badly injured. The PUNCH online reported about 38 people being injured, quoting officials of the National Emergency Management Agency, Yushau Shaibu.
Boko Haram has been blamed for a wave of increasingly bloody gun and bomb attacks in several parts of Africa’s most populous country in recent months, mostly in the Muslim-dominated north.
Incidents of attacks are also growing in the central region, the so-called Middle Belt which divides the predominantly Muslim north and the mainly Christian south.
Last Sunday several people were wounded in an explosion near a church outside the capital, Abuja.
Boko Haram has targeted Christians on many previous occasions, the most deadly of which was the bombing of St. Theresa Church, in Madalla, near Abuja on Christmas Day last year.
One of the alleged masterminds of the attack, Kabiru Sokoto has been arrested by the Nigeria’s secret service, SSS.
Meanwhile, a spokesman of the Islamist sect Boko Haram said it was behind Sunday’s suicide bomb attack outside a church in the central city of Jos, and warned of more such assaults.
“We carried out the attack on COCIN church in Jos today and we did what we did as part of our resolve to avenge the killings and dehumanisation of Muslims in Jos in the last 10 years,” spokesman Abul Qaqa told reporters in a conference call.