Clearly Boko Haram, officially known as the Party of the People of the Sunnah for Dawah and Jihad, is deeply rattled by Michelle Obama’s hashtag campaign, and in full retreat everywhere. Anyway, even though international attention is currently focused on Boko Haram, the media is likely to ignore this attack, as it appears to have been directed at least in part against Christians: Boko Haram has not struck in Jos “since it attempted to ignite sectarian tensions with a series of church bombs on Christmas Day 2011. Jos is at the heart of the Nigeria’s volatile Middle Belt, where the country’s largely Christian south and mostly Muslim north meet.”
“Nigeria bombings leave over a hundred dead in city of Jos,” by Monica Mark, The Guardian, May 20, 2014 (thanks to Thomas Pellow):
At least 118 people were killed in the central Nigerian city of Jos on Tuesday after two bombs ripped through a business district packed with commuters and traders.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the explosions, but the bombs bore the hallmarks of other attacks by Islamist sect Boko Haram, which has recently stepped up a bloody five-year battle campaign to establish a caliphate in northern Nigeria, and kidnapped more than 300 schoolgirls from a remote north-eastern school in April. In the past month, the group has set off two bomb blasts in the capital, Abuja, and another in the country’s second city, Kano….
That could push the death toll close to Boko Haram’s single biggest atrocity yet, a multiple-bomb attack in Kano which killed 170 in January 2012 . The attack suggests the insurgency, which originally started with hit-and-run home-made explosives thrown from motorbikes, is seeking to to make a show of its capabilities ahead of elections scheduled in 2015.Witnesses said soldiers had erected checkpoints around the area, and firefighters were still battling to put out flames that continued to rage almost two hours after the blasts.
Bala Mohammed, a resident who was returning home from his office nearby, said the force of the first explosion threw him to the ground. “People started running to help the wounded, and ten minutes later the second one went off. It took off the roof of the market building. Many were trapped inside, it was a terrible scene.”
Stung by recent criticism over sluggish responses to attacks, the government was quick to condemn the bombings. “President [Goodluck] Jonathan assures all Nigerians that government remains fully committed to winning the war against terror, and this administration will not be cowed by the atrocities of enemies of human progress and civilisation,” a statement released from his office said.
Far from Boko Haram’s northern strongholds, Jos has been relatively free of attacks by the sect. The group hasn’t struck there since it attempted to ignite sectarian tensions with a series of church bombs on Christmas Day 2011. Jos is at the heart of the Nigeria’s volatile Middle Belt, where the country’s largely Christian south and mostly Muslim north meet.
More than 1,500 people died in attacks by Boko Haram in the first three months of this year after the group stepped up its campaign. At least 105 were then killed in twin bomb blasts in the capital, Abuja, last month, while a suicide car bomber also killed five people in the northern city of Kano on Sunday evening.
Britain, the US and France have pledged to help rescue the schoolgirls snatched from north-eastern Borno state, marking a potential military escalation in a region already under a state of emergency.
jewdog says
The kidnapping of the school girls was unusual, and therefore newsworthy, but sectarian bombings such as this are so common that it’s background noise. In any case, it is less personal in nature, and lurid, than sex slavery.
Aside from the publicity angle, I suspect what’s going on is that well-funded jihadist forces beyond Nigeria’s borders (the Saudis, Qatar etc.) are stepping up efforts to Islamicize sub-Saharan Africa by killing and terrorizing the non-Moslems. Western countries need to treat this as a major strategic military challenge and meet it, which it has not yet done.
Mike C says
I would add. I think its a disgrace how the media only paid attention when the girls got kidnapped. People are being kidnapped and killed by the hundreds and thousands by Jihadists in Nigeria and elsewhere and only when females became involved does it become trendy to be concerned. Also a group of woman got kidnapped in Syria recently and im fairly certain it didnt make mainstream media because it was carried out by the media’s favourite terrorists, the Syrian Rebels
Jay Boo says
@jewdog
reference to:
“Aside from the publicity angle, I suspect what’s going on is that well-funded jihadist forces beyond Nigeria’s borders (the Saudis, Qatar etc.) ”
It could be that:
When Obama and Qatar decided to support the Islamist (‘freedom fighters’) in Libya it opened up the floodgates of arms to Boko Haram which Hillary refused to call a terrorist organization.
Obama and Hillary (& the MSM) must now try to shift all the responsibility on President Goodluck Jonathan to hide their own culpability and negligence since they can’t blame it on a film this time.
Kepha says
Mike C., currently, Radical Feminism and LGBT Rights are the estabalished religions of the USA. Boko Haram killing some mere heterosexual male zhlub just isn’t worth comment, apparently.
I understand BH’s leader is another who says he loves death better than we love life. May both sides of this get their wish–and in the case of the BH leader, the sooner he gets his great love, the better for everyone else.
dlbrand says
I bet you they are angry.
Angry we said, and proved it so, Islam calls for violence against non-believers.
Thus, following their book of guidance, holding the entire group (two Allah recognizes: the first, the believers, the second, the nonbelievers) responsible; they shed all this blood inspired, justified, lawfully according to their “sacred texts.”
Thus, this is what they do to prove how “wrong” we are in our refusal to knowledge the supremacy of Islam and the flawlessness of their prophet–
he did it, so his Army does it.
Peter Clemerson says
Although some of Boco Haram’s funding could be coming from sources within Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other gulf states, but presumably not from the governments themselves, a report called ‘Ivory’s Curse’ (see http://a362a94f6d3f5f370057-c70bddd8faa4afe1b2ec557b907836d0.r4.cf1.rackcdn.com/Ivorys-Curse-2014.pdf) issued by Born Free USA and A4ADS, two US conservation groups, makes it clear that ‘Blood’ ivory is financing Boco Haram. BH are killing elephants in neighbouring Cameroon and selling the ivory into the Chinese market. Al-Shabaab similarly finances itself by killing elephants in Kenya.
We, the western world, are financing violent and stealth jihads with our purchases of oil from the Middle East and the Chinese exacerbate the African violence with their purchases of ivory.
Until the West eliminates its dependency on oil and the Chinese drop their cultural attachment to ivory (or the elephants are shot to extinction) we will all have to watch our values and cultures being undermined. The earlier we consumers of oil and ivory stop the money flows to the perpetrators of jihads , the sooner our western values will become safe from attack.
Although I am fully supportive of Robert’s campaigns, if he wants to halt the jihads, he should be campaigning as much for US energy independence and even better, the replacement of oil by renewables, as he does against the jihads and dhimmis. I am confident that this is the only way to eliminate them. Cut off their funding. Building mosques, financing imams and fighting wars are expensive.
I believe that this situation may eventually be achieved by renewable technologies, but we must expect several more decades of the attacks on our values and persons before it is.
jewdog says
Thanks for that awful info on the African jihadist funding. As an animal lover I am now very upset and feel like hopping on a plane to go on a jihadi hunting safari.
King Dave says
This is the liberal response to Islamic mass murder and mass abductions. Holding up cardboard signs that took half a minute to make.
Of course that comes with the caveat of blaming medieval Christianity first.
We now know there is no Islamic atrocity that will spring the political left into action.
joeb says
This story didn’t make any of the main news bulletins in the UK. I suppose 118 people being blown up by boko haram is just not as sexy as 300 girls being enslaved by the same group. So if they had killed the girls at the school, would it have been reported?
Michael Copeland says
Islam is the world’s worst-taught subject, with appalling teachers and hopeless students. Islam’s own spokespeople have made this clear. They announce it has been hi-jacked, radicalized, politicized, warped, twisted, distorted, perverted, misunderstood, wrongly interpreted, and more, all this with no help from the kuffar.
See: “Tony Blair: “We seem blind””
http://libertygb.org.uk/v1/index.php/home/root/news-libertygb/6418-tony-blair-we-seem-blind?