Attacks on Nigeria churches

(June 11, 2012) Militants attacked two churches in north and central Nigeria on Sunday, spraying the congregation of one with bullets, killing several people, and blowing up a car in a suicide bombing near the other. A radical Islamist sect known as Boko Haram claimed the attacks. The violence in Jos and Biu, a city in hard-hit northeastern Borno state, comes as almost every weekend this year has seen churches targeted by Boko Haram and other shadowy assailants exacerbating the country's unease. Despite a heavy military presence in the region, deadly attacks by the sect have continued unstopped. In Jos, a city on the uneasy dividing line between Nigeria's largely Muslim north and Christian south, the suicide car bomber drove toward the compound of the Christ Chosen Church of God in the city and detonated his bomb nearby. The shock wave from the blast brought down a portion of the building, causing injuries inside.
Speaking to journalists on a conference call Sunday night, a spokesman for Boko Haram claimed both attacks. Nigeria faces a growing wave of sectarian violence carried out by Boko Haram, whose name means ``Western education is sacrilege'' in Hausa. Boko Haram has been blamed for killing more than 560 people this year alone, according to an Associated Press count. The sect's targets have included churches, police stations and other security buildings, often attacked by suicide car bombers across northern Nigeria. Nigeria, a nation of more than 160 million people, is divided between a largely Muslim north and Christian south. Boko Haram attacks have inflamed tensions between the two religions, though many in the faiths live peacefully with each other and intermarry in Africa's most populous nation.