Just two months after a suicide bomber attacked the United Nations headquarters in Abuja, killing 18 people, Boko Haram launched a complex suicide attack in the northern Nigerian city of Maiduguri. Boko Haram sent three suicide bombers to hit a military base, and set off three more IEDs in the city. From Reuters:
A triple suicide bombing of military headquarters in Maiduguri, three roadside bombs in different areas of the restive city and a gun attack west of it, shook north east Nigeria’s biggest city on Friday, witnesses and the military said.
Friday was one of the most violent days in radical Islamist sect Boko Haram’s growing campaign of violence against local authorities in northeastern Borno state.
“One soldier and six civilians have been injured by the three suicide bombers in multiple blasts,” Lieutenant Colonel Hassan Mohammed, commander of the Joint Military Taskforce told Reuters.
Earlier, three roadside bombs exploded in quick succession in an apparently coordinated strike, hitting the wards of Meduguri and Jajeri and the El-Kanemi College of Islamic Theology, all of them around the time of Friday prayers, sending the Muslim faithful fleeing from their mosques.
While the attack will likely be dismissed as amateurish as it didn’t garner a high casualty count, the complex nature of the operation indicates that Boko Haram is quickly adopting al Qaeda’s tactics. The terror group has received outside support from al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and Somalia’s Shabaab.
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