Bombings Kill Scores in Nigerian City

ABUJA, Nigeria—Three bombs struck the crowded city of Jos in quick succession on Tuesday, aid workers said, killing at least 118 people and putting one of Africa's most religiously divided cities back on edge.

Two bombs struck a teeming downtown marketplace minutes apart in the afternoon before a third blast occurred near a military outpost, said a Nigerian Red Cross aid worker who estimated that 40 people had been killed.

Other aid workers, meanwhile, hung back—afraid of the possibility of a fourth bomb, he said. Witnesses told the British Broadcasting Corp. that they had seen more than 40 bodies carried into a nearby hospital.

"It's serious," said the Red Cross responder. "It was located at the heart of the city. The heart of the city."

No group took immediate responsibility for the attacks. Still, the apparently indiscriminate bombings bore all of the gruesome hallmarks of Islamist insurgency Boko Haram, the same group that kidnapped 276 teenage girls from a high school in April.

This time, they struck one of #Nigeria's most nervous cities: Interfaith violence rages constantly across the lush hills outside Jos, carried out by people who have little, if any, connection to Boko Haram. 

President Goodluck Jonathan, who has drawn fire over what many Nigerians see as his insufficient response to Boko Haram, condemned the attacks, saying, "This administration will not be cowed by the atrocities of enemies of human progress."

While much of the world's attention has been fixated on the fate of the #schoolgirls, a campaign of car bombings has been under way across the Nigeria's Muslim hinterlands.

Two car bombs in the past five weeks hit the same suburb just minutes from the presidential villa in the capital, Abuja, killing at least 91 people. On Sunday evening, another bomb left five dead in the Christian quarters of Kano, an ancient Muslim city six hours' drive to the north of Abuja. While Boko Haram releases YouTube videos every few weeks, it rarely claims responsibility for attacks.

In Jos, a city of one million, the first two bombs struck a marketplace packed with Christian shopkeepers, but also Muslims. Local media showed grisly pictures of charred bodies loaded into trucks at the scene.

A young boy pushes a wheelbarrow past the wreckage of a burnt vehicle and burning shops following a bomb blast in the central city of Jos on Tuesday. AFP/Getty Images

Many of the city's residents remain accustomed to religious strife: Interfaith violence rages constantly across the hills outside the city, carried out by people who have little, if any, connection to Boko Haram.

Even still, many questioned the logic of an attack that killed people irrespective of faith. They included Henry Mang, a history professor at the University of Jos, who visited the hospital where "you could find a lot of Muslims, Christians, everybody.

"One man ran in just to discover his wife lying dead on one of the gurneys," Mr. Mang said. "He just stood there, took off his jacket, and covered her."

The wave of bombings poses a test for the religiously fraught city. Streets emptied in the hours after the blast, with both Muslims and Christians bracing themselves for another religious riot.

There have been many here. Riots in 2001 killed nearly 1,000 people, before roughly 700 more died in a similar round of clashes in 2008, followed by 2010 riots that left about 200 dead.

Now, Boko Haram appears to be tapping into the deep reservoir of religious hatred here. The group bombed a market in Jos on Christmas Eve in 2010, and set off three church bombs in 2012.

"The wider implication is the potential for it to destabilize the city and put it back into rioting again," said Adam Higazi, a Cambridge University Nigeria researcher who lived in Jos until recently. "They're trying to destabilize Jos again and spark more religious violence."

Crowds gather at a market in Jos on Tuesday where two bombings, along with a third near a military outpost, killed at least 118 people. European Pressphoto Agency

Nigeria has been beset by longstanding grievances between its Christian south and Muslim north. The country has had a Muslim president for just three of its past 15 years of democracy, and many Muslims here say they believe Christian politicians have ruled for too long. Far from the halls of power, Nigerians in the countryside —especially outside Jos—clash over farmland, too. Herdsman—almost all of them Muslims—frequently battle with farmers, largely Christians, who blame free-range cattle for trampling their crops.

Across the north, meanwhile, many Muslims insist Shariah law is the remedy to rampant corruption that has kept this country mired in poverty. Many Christians see Shariah as an unconstitutional imposition on a religiously mixed country. 

Boko Haram operates at a distance from these debates, nestled in forests far from political power or urban life. It hasn't succeeded in rallying Nigerian Muslims into a religious conflagration, if that was ever a goal. Its tactics have proved bloody, and the speeches by its leader, Abubakar Shekau, ramble on without much political focus.

In Jos, for now, the latest attacks have rattled nerves—but mostly found a public exhausted by religious acrimony. 

"From past experience, when things like this happen, there's rioting all over—it would just catch flame," said Mr. Mang, the professor, after driving home along vacant boulevards. "But this time the roads are clear."

Source: WSJ