Migiro visits Nigeria bomb victims

headquarters in Nigeria that killed at least 23 people and injured dozens.
Friday’s car bomb blew out windows, gutted a lower floor and set the building alight in one of the most lethal attacks on the world body in its history.
There has been no confirmed claim of responsibility for the attack but security sources suspect the violent Islamist sect Boko Haram, which has been blamed for almost daily bomb and gun attacks on security forces and civilians in the northeast.
A UN spokesman accompanying Migiro at the hospital where the victims were being treated said the death toll had risen to 23, from an earlier estimate of 19 given by emergency services.
That would make it more deadly than the truck bomb attack on the UN headquarters in Baghdad in 2003 that killed 22 people, including UN envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello.
“We are working as a team to ensure that the injured do get all the treatment that they require,” Migiro said after visiting the hospital, where she shook hands and patted the backs of the wounded.
“For people who had lost their lives we are working to see how they are going to be put to rest,” she said.
Migiro was due to meet later yesterday President Goodluck Jonathan, who visited the bomb site on Saturday but declined to speculate on who could be behind the attack. If Boko Haram, whose name means “Western education is sinful” in the northern Hausa language, was responsible, it marks an increase in the sophistication of its attacks and an escalation from local to international targets.
Migiro said the bombing was “a shocking incident, an attack on global peace and communities.”
“I have looked at the ripped-up gate. It is amazing how this happened and we are grappling with that, now . . . an investigation is under way . . . We will see what we have to do better,” added Migiro, who was accompanied by UN Security Chief Gregory Starr.
Most of the dead were Nigerian, but a Norway official confirmed one of its citizens was also killed. A UN official said he expected to be able to release the names and nationalities of the dead later on Sunday.
The car’s driver died in the blast, possibly making it Nigeria’s first suicide bombing.
The BBC said Boko Haram had contacted it to take responsibility for the attack, but such claims are hard to verify because the sect’s command structure is opaque and many people claim to speak on its behalf. – AFP.