Suicide bomber attacks Nigeria church, kills 10

JOS, Nigeria — A suicide car bomber attacked a Catholic church Sunday in the middle of Mass, killing at least 10 people in the blast and the retaliatory violence that followed in the latest violence targeting a church in a central Nigerian city plagued by unrest, a state official said.

The bomb detonated as worshippers attended the final Mass of the day at St. Finbar’s Catholic Church in Jos, a city where thousands have died in the past decade in religious and ethnic violence. Security at the gate of the church’s compound stopped the suspicious car and the bomber detonated his explosives during an altercation that followed, Plateau state spokesman Pam Ayuba said.

The blast damaged the church’s roof, blew out its windows and destroyed a portion of the fence surrounding the church’s compound, Ayuba said.

“He destroyed so many things,” the spokesman said.

The bombing sparked retaliatory violence in Jos later Sunday, with angry youths burning down homes and soldiers guarding the city opening fire in neighborhoods, witnesses said. Ayuba said at least 10 people died in the bombing, though others said the number of dead included those killed in retaliatory attacks. Soldiers also were wounded in the blast.

No group immediately claimed responsibility, though the city has been targeted in the past by an Islamist sect known as Boko Haram. The sect claimed a series of bombings in Jos on Christmas Eve in 2010 that killed as many as 80 people.

The sect could not be immediately reached for comment Sunday.

Jos and surrounding Plateau state have been torn apart in recent years by violence pitting its different ethnic groups and major religions — Christianity and Islam — against each other. Human Rights Watch said at least 1,000 people were killed in communal clashes around Jos in 2010.

The violence, often has more to do with local politics, economics and grazing rights. Muslims in the city also say they are locked out of lucrative jobs in the region, as the Christian-led state government doesn’t recognize them as citizens.

The Catholic church attack also followed a failed raid Thursday by British and Nigerian commandos that left a Briton and an Italian hostage dead in Nigeria’s far northwest. British officials have blamed a splinter cell of Boko Haram for the attack, something a spokesman for the group has denied.

Meanwhile Sunday, police said two separate attacks in northeast Nigeria blamed on the sect killed two people. One attack happened at a paramilitary police base in the town of Bama in Borno state, while the other happened during the day in Maiduguri, the sect’s spiritual home, authorities said.