Nigeria violence: Scores dead after Kano blasts

[muriel_volestrangler]

Eyewitnesses in the northern Nigerian city of Kano say they have counted scores of bodies after co-ordinated bomb attacks on Friday.

A 24-hour curfew is in place in the city. Police have confirmed seven deaths in various locations.

Police stations and the state police HQ were among the targets, and gunfire was heard across the second biggest city.

The militant Islamist group Boko Haram, whose name means "Western education is forbidden", said it was responsible.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-16663693

[maddezmom]

1. between 120-150

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/21/nigeria-attacks-claimed-by-boko-haram

[Igel]

2. Attempted ethnic cleansing and religio-political persecution.

But it provides no obvious grist for any domestic mills, so apart from a, "Gee, that's too bad" it won't provoke much outrage or concern.

The Hutu/Tutsi thing was the same way--no nice grist to be found until we could find somebody domestic (or at least Western) to blame. Same for Sudan--a genocide that Ms. Rice (Rice?) could overlook until the hypocrisy was too obvious to bear. Can't blame a victim, and some groups are always deemed "victims" of somebod, somewhere.

It's why suicide is so hard to deal with. You can't blame the killer because s/he's the victim, and victims must always be absolutely pure and innocent. It's easier to handle suicide when we can find a third party to say was the "real" killer and make the person who pulled the trigger a canonical victim, purged of all culpability.

[dipsydoodle]

3. Death toll in Nigeria's Kano at least 178 - doctor

(Reuters) - The death toll from gun and bomb attacks in the northern Nigerian city of Kano has risen to at least 178, a doctor in its main hospital said on Sunday, making this by far the deadliest attack claimed by the radical Islamist sect Boko Haram.

"We have 178 people killed in the two main hospitals," the senior doctor in Kano's Murtala Mohammed hospital said following Friday's attacks, citing records from his own and the other main hospital of Nasarawa.

"There could be more, because some bodies have not yet come in and others were collected early."

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/01/22/uk-nigeria-violence-idUKTRE80L0A420120122