Terror attack in Nigeria a cowardly act

The heartless killing of several people late on Sunday in a triple suicide bombing in northeast Nigeria is yet another act of cowardice and barbarism by terrorists.

Innocent civilians continue to suffer from indiscriminate attacks by militants in Nigeria and the matter should not be taken lightly anymore.

The latest attack bears the hallmarks of the dreaded Boko Haram group, which has been engaged in several such cruel acts for quite a long time.

The militant group had earlier attained international notoriety after abducting more than 270 schoolgirls from the town of Chibok. The girls were forced from their dormitories onto trucks and driven into the bush.

That case drew global attention to the insurgency and spawned high profile social media campaign Bring Back Our Girls.

It is extremely sad that many football fans who were watching a match on television fell victim to three bombers who detonated their explosives outside a hall in Konduga, 38 kilometres from the Borno state capital Maiduguri.

It is also unfortunate that the number of fatalities turned high because emergency responders were unable to reach the site of the blast quickly. Nor were they equipped to deal with large numbers of wounded.

The last suicide attack was in April this year when two female suicide bombers blew themselves up outside the garrison town of Monguno, killing a soldier and a vigilante and injuring another soldier.

Konduga has been repeatedly targeted by suicide bombers from a Boko Haram faction loyal to longtime leader Abubakar Shekau.

The faction typically carries out suicide attacks against soft civilian targets such as mosques, markets and bus stations, often using young women and girls as bombers.

It may be recalled that eight worshippers were killed when a suicide bomber attacked a mosque in the town last July.

Boko Haram insurgency has claimed 27,000 lives and forced some two million to flee their homes.

The violence has also spilled into neighbouring Niger, Chad and Cameroon, prompting the formation of a regional military coalition to battle the insurgents.

Terrorists are enemies of humanity and pose a threat in many countries.

An attack took place on Saturday in Wajir County, Kenya, in which at least eight police officers were killed when their car struck an improvised explosive device.

A car bomb attack in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, claimed the lives of eight people. Dozens were injured in both the terrorist acts, claimed by the Al Shabaab group, which is particularly active in Eastern Africa.

The attack in Kenya followed the kidnapping of three police reservists in Wajir County on Friday.

There has been a growing demand for stronger security and the Nigerian officials should do all they can to heed such a call.

The Nigerian government says the Boko Haram insurgency has been largely defeated, but indications on the ground are that more needs to be done as militants continue to launch attacks on civilian and military targets.

Besides the terrorists menace, the nation of 200 million, the most populous in Africa, is also grappling with violence between herder and farmer communities in its central region.

Time and again militants engage in monstrous actions with the wrong idea that they can strangle social harmony and break the unity of peace-loving people around the world.

They are doomed to fail. The world remains more united now than ever before against the bane of terrorism.