FBI agents storm Abuja •To investigate bombing

Posted by admin Abuja (FCT), State News, Top Stories Sunday, January 2nd, 2011

UNITED States Homeland Security Secretary, Janet Napolitano, told Fox News that Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents have been despatched to help the Nigerian government investigate the deadly bombing that struck an army barracks in the country’s capital on New Year’s Eve.

Napolitano spoke with Fox News, on Sunday, in Qatar, where she arrived for meetings with local officials after spending two days on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. The Nigerian bomb attack, along with a separate bombing in Egypt, was carried out shortly after Napolitano set out on her trip.

At least four people were killed and many more injured in the attack on Abuja, Nigeria’s capital. Twenty-one Christian worshippers in Alexandria, Egypt, were killed in the attack on a church following midnight Mass. Muslim extremists were implicated in both attacks, though nobody has yet claimed responsibility.

Napolitano said the attacks showed how the reach of international terrorism “knows no bounds.”

“One thing I think it illustrates is that we live in a world where terrorism is part of the environment, unfortunately. And it’s something that we need to be thinking about, we need to be planning for,” Napolitano said.

She said there’s no evidence at the moment to suggest there’s any connection to “anything in the United States.” She said her department would be monitoring closely and confirmed that the FBI has been dispatched to assist in the Nigerian investigation — a situation she said “is not all that uncommon.”

The FBI is often asked to help with such investigations due to its expertise in evidence collection.

Victims in the Nigerian bombing had been celebrating New Year’s Eve in the barracks’ open-air beer garden and market.
President Goodluck Jonathan afterward promised people attending a church service in Abuja that those responsible would be found.

In Egypt, officials quickly blamed foreigners and Al Qaeda, though the investigation had only just started. About 100 people were wounded in that attack.

President Obama strongly condemned the violence in a statement on Saturday. He said the United States was prepared to assist the Egyptian government in their investigation as well.

– Tribunewp_posts