ABUJA – The death toll from a suicide car-bomb attack at the UN's Nigeria headquarters has risen to 23, a UN spokesman said Sunday, making Friday's attack one of the deadliest attacks on the UN in a decade.
Martin Dawes also said Sunday that 81 people were wounded in Friday's attack.
UN security chief Gregory Starr, who visited the site on Sunday, said there was no advance warning of the attack and that the UN had only received "general threats."
UN Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro also visited the site Sunday and laid a bouquet of white and red roses among the wreckage.
The radical sect that claimed responsibility, Boko Haram, vowed Saturday to commit future attacks. Hours earlier, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan vowed to bring terrorism in Africa's most populous nation "under control."
However, his weakened government has so far been unable to stop the group from carrying out assassinations and bombings at will. Boko Haram is responsible for a rash of killings targeting security officers, local leaders and clerics in Nigeria's volatile northeast over the last year. They also claimed responsibility for a bombing at national police headquarters that killed two in June.
Friday's attack was the first suicide attack targeting foreigners by Boko Haram, a group which has reported links to Al-Qaeda, wants to implement a strict version of Sharia law in the nation and is vehemently opposed to Western education and culture.
