SUSPECTED members of the terrorist group Boko Haram carried out their recent threats to begin targeting media houses in the next phase of their ongoing campaign of terror on Thursday, hitting the Abuja and Kaduna offices of the ThisDay newspaper group. A second newspaper, The Sun, was also targeted in Tuesday’s attack.
According to reports from eyewitness sources at the scene, a male individual ran into the Abuja office of the ThisDay offices group at about 11 am in the morning with an explosive device, which detonated with deadly impact. Images from the site of the Abuja attack revealed the damaged structure of the building. The impact of the explosion also damaged buildings in the adjacent Rukkyat Plaza.
But a statement credited to the Chairman of the editorial board of ThisDay newspaper, Mr. Olusegun Adeniyi, told colleagues in the press that a security man and another staff of ThisDay died in the attack, along with the individual who carried out the attack, after someone in a Sport Utility Vehicle drove his vehicle into the premises and detonated and explosive device.
“The suicide bomber came in a jeep (SUV) and rammed a vehicle into the gate,” said Olusegun Adeniyi, chairman of the This Day editorial board. “Two of our security men died, and obviously the suicide bomber died too.”
An official number of casualties is yet to be released by the authorities.
“Someone, a suicide bomber, ran into the building with the bomb about an hour ago,” Nwakpa Nwakpa, a Red Cross official in Abuja, contradicting what other witnesses said about an SUV crashing into the building.
However, the FCT police commissioner said they were yet to get a report on the Kaduna incident and he could not, as at press time, state the number of casualties “until a detailed report is received from all sister agencies”.
Emergency officials of the National Emergency Management Authority released a brief statement after the attack, saying that its officials were on the site and that casualties were being evacuated to area hospitals. The statement also added that the agency does not have a definite number of casualties.
In what appeared to be coordinated attacks on multiple locations in the Thursday morning attacks, a separate explosion went off about the same time in the northern city of Kaduna. The attack occurred at a location popular with newspaper distributors and vendors along Kontangora Road in the city. The location also has the presence of several offices belonging to well-known newsprints.
As of the time of filing this report, police and soldiers present at the scenes of the attacks have restricted access to both locations.