Nigeria | Pakistan

Multiple explosions staged by suspected suicide bombers rocked the northeastern Nigerian city of Maiduguri, killing at least 23 people and wounding more than 100 others, police said on Tuesday. The three blasts, which struck on Monday evening, came after an attack on a military post overnight Sunday to Monday, which authorities blamed on suspected militants. Combined with the attack on the military position the evening prior and a mosque bombing in December, the assaults have wrecked a peaceful stretch in the city, which had become a relative oasis of calm as Nigeria’s long-running insurgency was pushed to the rural hinterlands. Fighters from Boko Haram and rival group Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) have recently stepped up attacks in northeastern Nigeria. Their 16-year campaign to establish their rule in the country has killed more than 40,000 people and displaced around two million. “Preliminary investigation reveals that the incidents were carried out by suspected suicide bombers,” police spoke...

Gunmen killed three people and abducted a Catholic priest and several others during an early morning attack on the clergyman’s residence in northern Nigeria’s Kaduna state, church and police sources said on Sunday. Saturday’s assault in Kauru district highlights persistent insecurity in the region, and came days after security services rescued all 166 worshippers abducted in attacks by gunmen on two churches elsewhere in Kaduna. Such attacks have drawn the attention of US President Donald Trump, who has accused Nigeria’s government of failing to protect Christians, a charge Abuja denies. US forces struck what they described as terrorist targets in northwestern Nigeria on December 25. The Catholic Diocese of Kafanchan named the kidnapped clergyman as Nathaniel Asuwaye, parish priest of Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Karku, and said 10 other people were abducted. Three residents were killed during the attack, which began at about 3:20am (7:20 PKT, the diocese said in a statement. A Kaduna police spokesperson c...

Nigeria on Friday signaled that more strikes against terrorist groups were expected after a Christmas Day bombardment by US forces against militants in the north of the country, which it said was a joint operation with its military. The west African country faces multiple interlinked security crises, with terrorists waging an insurgency in the northeast since 2009 and armed “bandit” gangs raiding villages and staging kidnappings in the northwest. The strikes came after Abuja and Washington were locked in a diplomatic dispute over what US President Donald Trump has characterised as the mass killing of Christians amid Nigeria’s myriad armed conflicts. A Pentagon official told AFP that “the Department of War worked with the government of Nigeria to carry out these strikes” and that they “were approved by the government of Nigeria”, without saying whether Nigeria’s military had been involved. US defence officials later posted a video of what appeared to be a nighttime missile launch from the deck of a battleship ...

President Donald Trump said US forces conducted “powerful and deadly” strikes on Thursday against Islamic State (IS) militants in northwestern Nigeria, weeks after he warned against any systemic assault on Christians in the country. The Nigerian foreign ministry early on Friday confirmed the air strikes, describing them as “precision hits on terrorist targets” in the country. The Department of Defence’s US Africa Command said “multiple ISIS terrorists” were killed in an attack in Sokoto state conducted at the request of Nigerian authorities, but few details were provided and it was not clear how many people died. The strikes hit IS targets on Christmas Day, according to Trump. View this post on Instagram “I have previously warned these Terrorists that if they did not stop the slaughtering of Christians, there would be hell to pay, and tonight, there was,” he said in a post on his Truth Social platform. “May God Bless our Military,” he said, adding provocatively, “MERRY CHRISTMAS to all, including the dead Ter...

National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) has participated as a sponsor in Nigeria’s National Identity Day 2025 celebration held in Abuja.

Flash flooding in north-central Nigeria last week killed more than 200 people, the Niger state humanitarian commissioner said Tuesday, while hundreds more remain missing and are feared dead. The town of Mokwa was hit with the worst flash flood in living memory Thursday from overnight rains, with more than 250 homes destroyed and swathes of the town wiped out in a single morning. The announcement comes after several days of the official toll standing at around 150, even as residents were sometimes missing more than a dozen members in a single family. “We have more than 200 … corpses,” Ahmad Suleiman told Nigerian broadcaster Channels Television, adding: “Nobody can tell you the number of casualties in Niger state right now because up till now, we are still looking for some corpses.” “We’re still looking for more,” he added. But, he said, “sincerely speaking, we cannot ascertain.” Given the number of people still missing nearly a week later, the toll from a single morning of flooding in Mokwa could be worse tha...

Flash floods that ripped through parts of central Nigeria have killed at least 115 people, an emergency services official said on Friday, with the toll expected to rise further. Teams of rescuers continued to search for missing residents after torrential rains late on Wednesday through early Thursday washed away and submerged dozens of homes in […]

At least 117 people have died and several others are still missing after heavy flooding destroyed thousands of homes in Nigeria’s Niger state, an emergency official said on Friday. The death toll is a sharp rise from Thursday’s figure of 21 people, Ibrahim Hussaini, head of the Niger State Emergency Management Agency, said, adding that some 3,000 houses were submerged in two communities in the north-central state. Nigeria is prone to flooding during the rainy season, which began in April. In 2022, Nigeria experienced its worst wave of floods in more than a decade which killed more than 600 people, displaced around 1.4 million and destroyed 440,000 hectares of farmland. The flooding incident in Niger state occurred on Wednesday night and continued into Thursday morning, Hussaini said, with a number of people still in the water.