UN deputy visits Nigeria bomb blast wounded

United Nations Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro yesterday visited the wounded from a bomb blast at the UN headquarters in Nigeria that killed at least 23 people and injured dozens more.

Friday’s car bomb in the capital Abuja blew out windows, gutted a lower floor and set the building alight in one of the most lethal attacks on the organisation 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 north-east.

A UN spokesman accompanying Ms 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,” Ms Migiro said after visiting the hospital, where she met the wounded.