A terrorist attack at a bus depot in Kano, northern Nigeria’s largest city, killed at least 22 people—and as many as 60, according to some estimates—when a Volkswagen packed with explosives crashed into a crowded bus filled with passengers. Authorities said there were two other explosions in the motor park that consumed other buses, wiping out a total of five motor coaches.
While the attack bore the signature of Boko Haram, the Islamist terrorist group that has been killing Christians in the name of establishing Islamist rule and sharia law, it was another group, Jamaatu Ansarul Muslimina Fi Biladissudan, or “Vanguards for the Protection of Muslims in the Land of the Blacks,” that claimed responsibility for attacks.
Boko Haram killed about 300 people on Kano in January 2012 in a sustained assault on the city, which is in the northern section of the country ruled by Muslims. Nigeria’s population of 160 million is roughly split in half between Muslims in the north and Christians in the south.
The bombs seemed intended for people from the Christian south, as they targeted a bus station where the buses are typically destined for cities in that region.
A textile trader, Fatima Abdullahi, 30, told the New York Times she had taken her seat and was waiting for her bus to fill when she saw the bombers crash into another bus. There was “a loud explosion and a huge fire,” she said.
Abdullahi said she saw people die, including “the ticket man I purchased my bus ticket from.”
The attack came as Nigeria has been preoccupied with the status of two different hostage situations. A video was released featuring the father of the French family that included four children that was kidnapped in February on the Nigeria-Cameroon border by men claiming to be from Boko Haram. The father Tanguy Moulin-Fournier speaks on the video, reporting deteriorating health and living conditions among the hostages, but there was relief that the family was still alive.
The kidnappers are demanding the release of Islamists held by Cameroon and Nigeria.
But another group of hostages – seven construction workers taken by the group Ansaru – may have been killed. Ansaru on March 9 claimed that it had executed them because of an attempt by Britain security forces to rescue them.
The names and nationalities of the slain foreign workers are: Brendan Vaughan (British), Silvano Trevisan (Italian), Imad Andari (Lebanese), Carlos Abou Aziz (Lebanese), Konstantinos Karras (Greek), Ghaida Saad (F/Syrian) and Julio Alkhouli (Syrian).
Britain, Italy and Greece has confirmed that the hostages had been executed.
