ABUJA, Nigeria — Two top U.N. officials offered conflicting views Sunday on the safety of its Nigeria headquarters after a suicide car bombing there, as the world body paused to mourn the 23 people killed in the attack claimed by a radical Muslim sect.
U.N. security chief Gregory Starr acknowledged that safety features “could have been better” to stop the speeding sedan loaded with explosives. But only hours later, U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro told journalists that the building had “really, really tight” security.
Migiro earlier laid bouquets of red and white roses near a U.N. flag flying at half staff at the site of Friday’s attack, along with Nigeria’s foreign minister and the body’s acting local representative. She promised the U.N. would continue its work no matter what in Nigeria, an oil-rich country of 150 million people violently divided by religion and ethnicity.
“We cannot allow ourselves to be intimidated by terrorism,” Migiro said.
The U.N. also had no specific intelligence or information about Boko Haram, the radical Muslim sect from Nigeria’s northeast that claimed responsibility for the attack.
The death toll in the attack rose Sunday to 23 people killed, said Martin Dawes, a U.N. spokesman attending the trip. Dawes said another 81 people were wounded in the attack.
Friday’s attack was the first suicide attack targeting foreigners by Boko Haram, a group that has reported links to African terrorist groups al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and al-Shabab of Somalia. The sect wants to implement a strict version of Shariah law in the nation.
