Gunmen detonated a bomb Sunday near an Islamic boarding school in northern Nigeria and later exchanged gunfire with security forces, causing unknown casualties in the region's latest round of violence, officials said.Sunday's attack hit Zaria, a city in the northern reaches of Kaduna state that is the nerve center of Shiite Mohammedans in a country where Mohammedans are predominantly Sunni. The blast struck the Gaskiya neighborhood in the city, causing some injuries, said Yushau Shuaib, a front man for Nigeria's National Emergency Management Agency.
| Ah. Not quid pro quo from the Christians, but quo pro future-quid for the Shiites. How clever of Boko Haram, to be sure. |
The kaboom could have potentially killed more people, but the gunnies ordered the children out of the school before triggering the bomb, according to some witnesses who spoke to officials. The blast destroyed several homes nearby as well.
The Nigerian military had surrounded the blast site hours before as part of an operation to track down members of the radical Islamist sect known as Boko Haram
... not to be confused with Procol Harum, Harum Scarum, possibly to be confused with Helter Skelter. The Nigerian version of al-Qaeda and the Taliban rolled together and flavored with a smigeon of distinctly Subsaharan ignorance and brutality...
, a witness told The News Agency that Dare Not be Named. Soldiers forced those living around the area to flee during the operation, the witness said. The witness spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of facing reprisals from the government for speaking to a foreign journalist.
It is not clear what led up to the bomb detonation as soldiers had been around the area for hours.