Jonathan vows to ‘hunt down’ mosque attackers
Print Edition
NIGERIAN President Goodluck Jonathan yesterday vowed to hunt down those behind the “heinous” attacks that left at least 120 people dead at the mosque of an Islamic leader who had issued a call to arms against Boko Haram.
At least 270 others were also wounded when two suicide bombers blew themselves up and gunmen opened fire during weekly prayers on Friday at the Grand Mosque in Kano, the biggest city in the mainly Muslim north of the country.
Jonathan had “directed the security agencies to launch a full-scale investigation and to leave no stone unturned until all agents of terror ... are tracked down and brought to justice,” said a statement from his office.
“The president reaffirms that terrorism in all forms ... is a despicable and unjustifiable threat to our society.”
The mosque is attached to the palace of the Emir of Kano Muhammad Sanusi II, Nigeria’s second most senior Muslim cleric, who last week made a call at the same mosque, urging civilians to take up arms against Islamist extremists Boko Haram. The Emir was out of the country during the attacks. The attack was widely seen as revenge for the call.
“It was death and blood all over. People lay dead and others shrieked in horror and pain,” a survivor, Muhammad Inuwa Balarabe, said. “I was inside the mosque. As soon as the prayer started, a bomb went off. They just started shooting people,” said the 32-year-old tailor, who received serious burns to his thighs.
Jonathan urged Nigerians “not to despair in this moment of great trial in our nation’s history but to remain united to confront the common enemy.”
“One wonders what kind of religion these people practise,” said survivor Maikudi Musa, who lost one sibling in the blast and saw another badly hurt.
Just hours before the Kano massacre, a suspected remote-controlled roadside bomb near a mosque nearly 600 kilometers away in Maiduguri, was defused.
Maiduguri, where Boko Haram was founded in 2002, was already tense after two women female suicide bombers wreaked havoc at a crowded market on Tuesday, killing more than 45 shoppers and traders.
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