Nigerian police arrested about 200 people, including 160 from neighboring Chad, suspected of involvement in bombings last week that killed 256 people in the northern city of Kano.
Nigeria’s government has contacted Chadian authorities to investigate the possibility the Islamic militant group, Boko Haram, which claimed responsibility for the attacks, of having training facilities in Chad, said a police official in Kano, who declined to be named because he is not authorized to speak to the media.
Boko Haram, which draws its inspiration from Afghanistan’s Taliban movement, is responsible for a surge in violence in the mainly Muslim north of Nigeria, Africa’s largest oil producer. The group, whose name means “Western education is a sin,”claimed responsibility for a suicide car-bomb attack on the United Nations building in the capital, Abuja, on Aug. 26 that killed 24 people. It’s also blamed for a Christmas Day bombing of a church near Abuja that killed 43 people.
Chad’s government told Nigerian authorities that President Idriss Deby had asked for security forces in the country to investigate and dismantle any training camps, if found, the Nigerian police official said.
The series of coordinated bomb and gun attacks in Kano on Jan. 20 killed at least 256 people, according to Nigeria’s Civil Rights Congress. Police in Kano put the official death toll at 184.
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To contact the reporter on this story: Mustapha Muhammad in Johannesburg at mmuhammad5@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Andrew J. Barden at barden@bloomberg.net
