Official says 118 dead, toll to rise in twin car bombs at bus station in Nigerian city of Jos
Official says 118 dead, toll to rise in twin car bombs at bus station in Nigerian city of Jos
JOS, Nigeria — Two car bombs exploded at a bustling bus terminal and market in Nigeria’s central city of Jos on Tuesday, killing at least 118 people, wounding dozens and leaving streets strewn with bloodied bodies.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the twin car bombs. But they bore the hallmarks of Boko Haram, the Islamic extremist group that abducted nearly 300 schoolgirls last month and has repeatedly targeted bus stations and other locations where large numbers of people gather in its campaign to impose Islamic law on Nigeria.
The second blast came half an hour after the first, killing some of the rescue workers who had rushed to the scene, which was obscured by billows of black smoke.
Dozens of bodies and body parts were covered in grain that had been loaded in the second car bomb, witnesses said. A Terminus Market official said he helped remove 50 casualties, most of them dead. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not allowed to give information to reporters.
“It’s horrifying, terrible,” said Mark Lipdo of the Stefanos Foundation, a Christian charity based in Jos, who described the sickening smell of burning human flesh.
Ukrainian citizens’ anger grows at pro-Russian rebels as Kiev lawmakers make new peace offer
SLOVYANSK, Ukraine — From the country’s richest man to citizens under fire, anger and dismay over Ukraine’s eastern turmoil gained strength Tuesday, but pro-Russian rebels who have declared the region independent vowed defiance.
In Kiev, home to the central government that the separatists detest, lawmakers passed a memorandum that guaranteed the status of Russian as Ukraine’s second official language and proposed government decentralization. While the document offered no specifics or timeframe, Russia — which long had pressed for both commitments — offered words of guarded welcome.
“If what you are saying is true, this is the development we have been speaking about for the past months,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin was quoted as telling state news agency RIA Novosti.
In Mariupol, an eastern Ukrainian city that suffered fatal clashes this month between protesters and police, workers at a steel mill stopped their labor at noon as a siren blew. They gathered for a speech from the company’s chief condemning the separatist movement known as the Donetsk People’s Republic.
“We are here because Mariupol needs a peaceful sky above us. Tanks and guns have no place in our city,” said mill worker Sergey Kulitsh.
Judge overturns Pennsylvania’s gay marriage ban, calls challengers ‘courageous’
PHILADELPHIA — Pennsylvania’s ban on gay marriage was overturned by a federal judge Tuesday in a decision that legalized same-sex unions throughout the Northeast and sent couples racing to pick up licenses.
U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III called the plaintiffs — a widow, 11 couples and one couple’s teenage daughters — courageous for challenging the constitutionality of the ban passed by lawmakers in 1996.
“We are a better people than what these laws represent, and it is time to discard them into the ash heap of history,” Jones wrote.
Jones declined to put his ruling on hold for a possible appeal by Republican Gov. Tom Corbett, so the order went into immediate effect. The governor did not immediately announce Tuesday whether he would appeal.
County offices in Philadelphia stayed open late to handle marriage applications, while officials in Pittsburgh were closed for election day but accepting them online.
By wire sources