Nigeria bombing suspect killed after 21 die in Abuja blast

The bomb blast near a shopping mall in Abuja killed 21 people and injured 52 others on Wednesday.

ABUJA // Nigerian security forces killed one suspect and detained another after 21 people died in a bomb explosion near a shopping centre in Abuja – the third attack in the capital this year.

After the blast, a suspect was killed as he tried to flee on a bike, according to the National Information Centre.

The blast on Wednesday near the Emab Plaza wounded 52 people, National Emergency Management Agency spokesman Ezekiel Manzo said on Thursday. The bombing occurred at about 4pm local time in a district popular with wealthy Nigerians and foreigners.

No group has claimed responsibility.

Nigerian security forces are struggling to contain a violent campaign by the Islamist group Boko Haram to impose Islamic law on Africa’s biggest oil producer. The group killed at least 75 people in an Abuja suburb in April in the capital’s deadliest bombing.

If the blast “is a terrorist attack, it highlights the increased capabilities of Boko Haram to strike within the city despite the greater public security presence there”, said Thomas Hansen, senior Africa analyst at Control Risks in London in an email. “Previously, attacks have only occurred on the outskirts of Abuja.”

A week before the attack, government spokesman Mike Omeri said intelligence reports indicated militants planned to hijack gasoline trucks and use them to carry improvised explosives to the capital.

Boko Haram, which means “western education is a sin” in the Hausa language, has focused its five-year insurgency on the north and the capital, hundreds of miles from the coastal oil and gas fields and the southern commercial capital, Lagos.

The militants drew international outrage when they kidnapped more than 200 schoolgirls from the town of Chibok in the northeastern state of Borno in April. Most of the girls are still missing, and countries including the US and UK have pledged to aid the search and rescue effort.

Nigeria, a country of 170 million people with Africa’s biggest economy, is roughly divided between a mainly Muslim north and predominately Christian south.

* Bloomberg