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Soldiers stand guard on the side of a church targeted by a suicide attacker Sunday who detonated a car filled with explosives, in Kaduna, Nigeria, on Oct. 28. The suicide bombing sparked fierce reprisals from Christians. (STRINGER/AFP/Getty Images)
A church in northern Nigeria was targeted on Sunday by a suicide bomb attack, killing at least seven churchgoers as well as the bomber who drove the vehicle of explosives into the church. Several others were wounded in the attack.
No one has claimed responsibility for the attack, but it is suspected that the Boko Haram Islamist militant sect was behind it. The group has carried out attacks on churches in northern Nigeria over the past several years, including a Christmas day attack last year on several churches that killed at least 44.
In the incident, a suicide bomber drove a vehicle filled with explosives into a Catholic church in the city of Kaduna, reported Al Jazeera. Kaduna, which has a large Christian population, is located basically on the dividing line that separates the Muslim north and the Christian south.
After the bombing, young Nigerian churchgoers armed themselves with knives and clubs. One shouted, “We killed them and we’ll do more,” according to Reuters. The youths beat to death two Muslims passing the church shortly after the attack, reported The Associated Press.
Around 2,800 people have died since Boko Haram, which means “Western education is sinful” in the local Hausa language, took up arms in 2008. The sect also has targeted newspapers, mosques, and others.
“The persistence of messengers of evil will not prevail over the will of the government and the people to secure peace and safety,” said the Nigerian president’s spokesman Reuben Abati reported AP.
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