Security personnel on Saturday arrested six women, including the widow of the alleged ThisDay newspaper suicide bomber, in a raid on a hideout of the Islamist militant group Boko Haram in the central city of Jos.
Boko Haram, which seeks to impose strict Islamic law in Nigeria, claimed responsibility for the April 26 attacks on newspaper offices in Abuja, the capital, and the northern city of Kaduna that killed at least eight people and injured 34.
“The wife of the bomber of ThisDay Office in Abuja was arrested,” Colonel Victor Ebhaleme, field operations officer of the joint task force in Borno state, said today by phone from Maiduguri. Suspected Boko Haram members today shot dead a civilian in a separate attack in Maiduguri, he said.
Authorities in Nigeria, Africa’s top oil producer, blame Boko Haram for a surge of attacks since 2009 against government buildings and security forces in the mainly Muslim north and Abuja. Boko Haram, which means “Western education is a sin,” claimed responsibility for attacks in Kano on Jan. 20 that killed at least 256 people.
In yesterday’s raid in Rikkos, a district of Jos, troops recovered more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition, four improvised explosive devices, 19 detonators and 10 bags of fertilizers, Ebhaleme said.