Nigeria expects UN to sanction Boko Haram

Wednesday, May 21, 2014

photo Red Cross personnel search Wednesday for remains at the site of one of Tuesday's car bomb in Jos, Nigeria. Two car bombs exploded at a bustling bus terminal and market in Nigeria's central city of Jos on Tuesday, killing over 100 people, wounding dozens and leaving bloodied bodies amid the flaming debris.

Major attacks by Islamic extremists in NigeriaRecent major attacks attributed to Islamic extremists from Boko Haram. More than 2,000 people have been killed this year in attacks blamed on the group:- May 21, 2014: Gunmen attack three villages in northern Nigeria, killing 48 people and setting homes ablaze.- May 20, 2014: Two car bombs hit a busy bus terminal and a market in the central city of Jos, killing 118 people and wounding dozens. The second blast comes a half-hour after the first, killing some rescue workers who had come to the scene.- May 19, 2014: A car bomb at a bus station kills 24 people in the Christian quarter of the northern Muslim city of Kano, where police later defuse another car bomb.- May 1, 2014: A car bomb explodes in the capital of Abuja near a checkpoint across from a busy bus station, killing 19 and wounding 66.- April 15, 2014: More than 300 girls and young women are kidnapped from a school in Chibok in northern Nigeria. Dozens escape, but the group's leader threatens to sell most of the remaining 276 hostages into slavery if the government does not release detained militants.- April 14, 2014: What is believed to be a buried bomb rips through a bus station during the morning rush hour in Abuja, killing 75 and wounding 141.- March 14, 2014: An assault by gunmen on the main Giwa Barracks in Maiduguri frees hundreds of detainees and leads to a battle that kills about 425 people. Hospital workers say they were forced to hold a mass burial because the morgue could not hold the bodies.- Feb. 25, 2014: Islamic extremists kill 59 students at a boarding school in Yobe state, locking some into a dormitory and burning them alive.- Feb. 19, 2014: Islamic extremists attack the agricultural and commercial center of Bama, killing 115 people, razing more than 1,500 homes and destroying 400 vehicles. The attack comes the same day the leader of the terrorist network warns leading Nigerian Muslim political, religious and traditional leaders that his fighters will target them for pursuing democracy and Western-style education.- Feb. 15-16, 2014: Islamic militants shoot and stab dozens of people in eight villages in Borno and Adamawa states, killing more than 150. The military had been bombing extremists in forest hideouts in the area.- Jan. 26, 2014: Extremists blow up the main market with homemade bombs, shoot at people and then set huts on fire in Kawuri village, killing at least 85 people.- Jan. 20, 2012: Boko Haram claims responsibility for a series of coordinated bombings and gun battles around the city of Kano that kill at least 185 people.

UNITED NATIONS - Nigeria's U.N. envoy says she expects the Security Council to declare Boko Haram a terrorist group and impose sanctions on the al-Qaida-linked extremists who have carried out a wave of deadly attacks and the recent abduction of nearly 300 schoolgirls.

"I don't think there will be any objections," Ambassador U. Joy Ogwu told several reporters on Wednesday.

Nigeria, which is serving a two-year term on the council, asked the committee monitoring sanctions against al-Qaida to add Boko Haram to the list of organizations subject to an arms embargo and asset freeze. Unless any of the 14 other council member object by a Thursday afternoon deadline, Boko Haram will be added to the al-Qaida sanctions list.

Ogwu said "the important thing is to attack the problem, and that is terrorism."