In the second ever major attack on Abuja, the Al-Qaeda-inspired terror group Boko Haram detonated a car bomb at a bus stop during rush hour.
Al-Qaeda-inspired Islamists brought their long-running terror campaign to the outskirts of Nigeria's capital yesterday with a massive bomb at a bus station that killed at least 71 people.
Explosives were hidden in a vehicle and detonated at the peak of the Monday morning rush hour, when thousands of commuters were queuing to board buses at Nyanya, nine miles south of Abuja city centre.
Dozens were killed in the initial blast, and then more died as fuel
tanks in waiting vehicles ignited, triggering several secondary explosions and sending a plume of thick black smoke hundreds of feet into the air.
By nightfall at least 71 people were confirmed dead and 124 were being treated in hospital. Many were badly burnt and the death toll was likely to rise.
Charity Enang was inside a bus waiting to pull out of its bay when the explosion happened. "All we heard was "boom" and I saw people's flesh flying out of the window of the bus," she said.
"I couldn't stand and I fell, but one man carried me out of the bus and took me to an ambulance." Another survivor, Chima Okere, a businessman, described hearing the explosions as he left the bus station. "I saw so many people dead, some with their limbs dismembered from their bodies," he said. "I was lucky, I do not know how I survived."
It was only the second major attack on Abuja blamed on Boko Haram, a fundamentalist militia growing in strength that is fighting for strict Islamic law to be introduced across Nigeria's north.
Its usual targets are police stations, bars, schools, churches or public places in the majority-Muslim north, where the extremists aim to kill Christians or state security agents. Abuja is instead in the centre of Nigeria, away from Boko Haram's territory.
In 2011, its agents rammed a 4x4 laden with explosives into the United Nations headquarters in the capital, killing 21 people and wounding more than 60.
That the group's terror cells could again strike close to the heart of the country has created deep anger in Abuja, with many witnesses to yesterday's bombing blaming the government for failing to keep them safe.
Goodluck Jonathan, Nigeria's president, declared a state of emergency in his nation's northern states last year, but security forces have failed to win the upper hand in the ongoing fighting there.
More than 1,500 people had already died in attacks attributed to Boko Haram in Nigeria this year, before yesterday's bombing.
Visiting the scene, Mr Jonathan promised that his administration was doing all it could to contain the fundamentalists.
"The issue of Boko Haram is quite an ugly history within this period of our own development," he told reporters at the bus station.
"Government is doing everything to make sure that we move our country forward. But the issue of Boko Haram is temporary. Surely, we will get over it."
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