Bomb Planted Near Cars Outside A Church Explodes In City Near Nigeria’s Capital, Wounding 5
ICC Note
Suspected members of the Islamic radical group, Boko Haram, carried out the bomb attack. Church service was going on at the time of the explosion. 
02/19/2012 Nigeria (The Washington Post)-A bomb planted by an abandoned car exploded outside a church in the middle of a worship service Sunday near Nigeria’s capital, wounding five people amid a continuing wave of violence by a radical Islamist sect, authorities and witnesses said.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the blast outside the Christ Embassy church in Suleja, a city near the nation’s capital Abuja. However, the area has been targeted in the past by the sect known as Boko Haram — including the Christmas Day car bombing of a Catholic church nearby that killed at least 44 people.
The explosion happened just after 10 a.m. as the church began its service, Pastor Uyi Idugboe told journalists. Security guards at the church had noticed something suspicious by the abandoned car, prompting the pastor to call everyone inside the church before the service began, he said.
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One person was seriously injured in the blast and taken to a local hospital, local police spokesman Richard Oguche said. Another four people suffered minor injuries, said Yushau Shuaib, a spokesman for Nigeria’s National Emergency Management Agency.
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While police continued to investigate, suspicion for the blast immediately fell on Boko Haram, a group that has been waging increasingly bloody attacks against Nigeria’s weak central government.
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The sect’s attacks, including those specifically targeting Christians, have widened distrust between the two faiths in Africa’s most populous nation. Nigeria is largely split between a Christian south and a Muslim north, and most of Boko Haram’s previous attacks have taken place in the north.
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In nearby Madalla, another town in Niger state, a car bomb exploded outside St. Theresa Catholic Church there, killing at least 44 people. Authorities have blamed all the previous attacks in Suleja on Boko Haram.
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