 |
| President Muhammadu Buhari |
Bomb
blasts at two bustling bus stations killed 29 people and wounded 105, officials
said Thursday after Nigeria's new president warned that the U.S. refusal to
sell his country strategic weapons is "aiding and abetting" Boko
Haram.
Nigeria's National Emergency Management Agency called Thursday
for urgent blood donations to treat 105 wounded people, according to spokesman
Sani Datti who said at least 29 bodies have been recovered.
Associated Press reports:
Wednesday night's bombings in northeastern Gombe town are the
latest in a series by Islamic extremists that has spilled across Nigeria's
borders. In neighboring Cameroon on Wednesday, two suicide bombers killed at
least 18 people at a marketplace near the border, officials said.
Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari returned home Thursday to
the capital, Abuja, from a four-day visit to the United States where he was
warmly received by President Barack Obama, but failed to get all he wanted.
"Buhari returns to Abuja, with no weapons sale from
USA," said a headline in The News.
Buhari told policy makers at the U.S. Institute for Peace on
Wednesday that Nigeria's armed forces are "largely impotent" because
they do not possess the appropriate weapons to fight Boko Haram.
He urged the U.S. president, Congress and government to find
ways around the Leahy Law that prohibits sales of certain weapons to countries
whose military are accused of gross human rights violations.
Amnesty International charges Nigeria's military is responsible
for the deaths of 8,000 detainees — twice as many as Boko Haram's victims in
the first four years of its 6-year-old insurgency.
"The application of the Leahy law ... has aided and abetted the
Boko Haram terrorist group in the prosecution of its extremist ideology and
hate, the indiscriminate killings and maiming of civilians, in raping of women
and girls, and in their other heinous crimes," Buhari said.
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