Nigeria blast suspect held

Second man shot dead by soldiers while trying to flee after bomb kills 21

Nigerian authorities have arrested one suspect and killed another after a bomb claimed 21 lives in a shopping center in the capital Abuja, a city gripped by fear of attacks by Boko Haram Islamists.

Wednesday's blast shook the Emab Plaza at 4 pm, the National Emergency Management Agency said, as shoppers were buying groceries ahead of the country's World Cup match against Argentina, which started an hour later.

"The casualty figure for now is 21 persons dead, 17 injured," national police spokesman Frank Mba said, adding that a suspect had been arrested.

Later, the National Information Centre said a second suspect had been shot dead by troops as he tried to escape on a motorbike.

A soldier close to the scene but who demanded anonymity told reporters that two suspects who tried to flee the scene were caught. One of them who was shot by soldiers as he was fleeing later died from his injuries.

Senior government spokesman Mike Omeri confirmed that the blast was the result of "a bomb attack".

Islamist insurgency

"The explosion struck at peak business time," said NEMA spokesman Manzo Ezekiel, adding that the area was busy at the time of the blast and that 40 cars had been destroyed.

Boko Haram, which sparked worldwide outrage by kidnapping more than 200 schoolgirls in April, has attacked Nigeria's capital twice in the last 10 weeks.

A car bombing killed 75 people at the Nyanya bus terminal on the outskirts of the city on April 14, while a copycat bombing at the same spot on May 1 left 19 people dead.

The security services put the capital under lockdown following the second explosion as Abuja prepared to host a World Economic Forum summit on Africa in early May.

While the forum went off without a hitch, a Boko Haram attack in the heart of the capital less than two months on will raise fresh doubts about Nigeria's capacity to contain the group's worsening insurgency.

Boko Haram attracted international condemnation for the mass abductions in April, and is blamed for this week's abductions of another 91 people - 31 boys and 60 girls and women with toddlers as young as 3.

Nigeria's military and government claim to be winning the war in the five-year-old insurgency but the tempo and deadliness of attacks have increased this year, killing more than 2,000 people so far compared with an estimated 3,600 killed over the past four years.

Omeri, the government spokesman, said security agencies are "handling the situation" at Wednesday's bombing.

He said that "every step is being taken by the government to check the activities of insurgents in the country" and advised Nigerians to remain vigilant and conscious of movement of unidentified people.

Boko Haram wants to install an Islamic state in Nigeria, a West African nation whose 170 million people are almost equally divided between Muslims, who are dominant in the north, and Christians in the south.

AFP - AP