Bashir Adigun of the Associated Press is reporting that a car laden with explosives rammed through two gates and blew up at the United Nations' offices in Nigeria's capital, Abuja, Friday, killing at least seven people and shattering part of the concrete structure.
The brazen attack, carried out as the U.N. offices teemed with staff, comes as Africa's most populous nation faces the growing threat of both homegrown and international terrorism. Militants from the country's oil-rich Niger Delta and a radical Muslim sect from northeast Nigeria have carried out attacks in the country's capital, though never on a foreign target.
Witnesses told the Associated Press that a sedan rammed through two separate gates at the U.N. compound as guards tried to stop the vehicle. The suicide bomber inside drove the car up to the main reception of the building and detonated the explosives, inflicting the most damage possible, witnesses said.
"I saw scattered bodies," said Michael Ofilaje, a UNICEF worker at the building. "Many people are dead."
He said it felt like "the blast came from the basement and shook the building."
The building houses about 400 employees of the U.N. in Nigeria, including the majority of its offices. A local U.N. spokesman declined to comment, but a local hospital administrator told the AP that the hospital had treated as many as 40 victims so far, with more people coming in for treatment.
Why do terrorists insist on blowing up buildings with innocent people in them? That is not an act of terror — it is an act of cowardice.
Read more at Yahoo News.
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