Nigeria today probed its deadliest ever bomb attack, with Boko Haram blamed for the atrocity that killed at least 118 people and fresh attacks near the town where more than 200 schoolgirls were kidnapped.
Emergency services picked through the burnt-out remains of vehicles and collapsed buildings in the New Abuja Market area of the central city of Jos, where two car bombs exploded within 20 minutes of each other yesterday.
The attack was the latest affront to the Nigerian government's internationally backed security crackdown in response to the mass abduction of more than 200 schoolgirls on April 14 that has sparked global attention.
The United States described the Jos carnage -- and a suicide car bombing in the northern city of Kano on Sunday -- as "vicious attacks on defenceless Nigerian civilians".
Two more attacks in villages near the girls' hometown of Chibok in northeastern Borno state were meanwhile reported, with witnesses saying that 30 people were killed on Monday and yesterday.
In Jos, where Boko Haram have attacked before, Plateau state governor Jonah Jang's spokesman said the bombing bore the hallmarks of the Islamist extremists.
"The investigation is still ongoing but this is clearly an extension of the terrorist activity that has affected the northeast of the country, the Boko Haram insurgents," Pam Ayuba told AFP.
Kyari Mohammed, a Boko Haram specialist and chairman of the Centre for Peace Studies at Modibbo Adama University in Yola, Adamawa state, said Boko Haram were "the only ones capable of doing this".
Nigeria submitted a request to the United Nations to proscribe Boko Haram as an international terrorist group, while the country's neighbours have vowed to step up co-operation to prevent a regional conflagration.
The UN special envoy for Central Africa Abou Moussa, speaking in Gabon, said the Islamists "have no fear, they have no shame. They do whatever they want".
Mohammed, however, said that while on the one hand international pressure was forcing the government in Abuja to act, it was also emboldening Boko Haram to mount further strikes.
"They have sleeper cells all over the northern part of the country and they're activating them. That's what they're going to do. We should anticipate more attacks, especially if they (the government and the international community) are unable to solve the Chibok problem...," he said.
