Biafra:Nigerian Separatists Hijack Ship and Demand Release of Detained Leader

Nigerian separatists have hijacked a merchant ship and threatened to blow it up with its foreign crew if authorities do not release a detained leader agitating for a breakaway state of Biafra, military officers said Tuesday.

Maj. Gen. Rabe Abubakar, the Defense Ministry spokesman, confirmed the hijacking occurred on Friday and called it "an act of sabotage." He did not tell reporters the name of the ship.
Abubakar spoke on Monday. Other officers on Tuesday told The Associated Press that the navy is in pursuit of the captured vessel. The officers, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the press, said the hijackers have given the government 31 days to free Kanu or say they will blow up the ship along with its crew.
Maritime industry reports indicated the vessel was an oil tanker seized about 100 miles (160 kilometers) off Nigeria's Bakassi Peninsula, along Nigeria's southeastern Atlantic Ocean coastline, near the border with Cameroon.

"The group boarded the tanker from two fast boats and took control over the vessel and locked the crew in the mess room" before heading for the Niger Delta, the Bulgarian-based Maritime News reported.

The ultimatum from the separatists was given at the weekend by "General Ben." Ben is not a separatist but "some Niger Delta militants have shown interest in working with us," said Uchena Madu, a leader of the Movement for the Actualization of a Sovereign State of Biafra.

The hijacking — the first such act claimed by the separatists — indicates they could be working with some Niger Delta oil militants blamed for recent bombings of pipelines in the oil-rich south, escalating conflict in a country already burdened by Boko Haram's deadly Islamic uprising in the northeast and violent ethno-religious confrontations between farmers and herders in central Nigeria. Africa's biggest economy and oil producer also is battered by slashed petroleum prices.

Secret police on Oct. 17 detained Nnamdi Kanu, director of banned Radio Biafra, and since have accused him of terrorism, sparking protests in which police are accused of killing several demonstrators.

Nigeria's Igbo people prosecuted a civil war to create a separate state of Biafra in the southeast that killed a million people in the 1960s. Many Igbos charge they still suffer discrimination.

In an apparently unrelated development, pirates seized the Greek-owned chemical tanker MV Leon Dias off Nigeria's coast, according to an official of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency who insisted on anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to reporters. He said it was hijacked on Friday, other reports said Sunday, and diverted to an oil terminal off Cotonou, capital of neighboring Benin. Maritime News said the chief officer was seriously injured and is being held hostage with four other seamen.

Yewande fatoki stabed her husband: Can This Be True?

Yewande Fatoki stabbed her husband. On Monday night all because she heard he had a son outside wedlock. This generated a heated argument between the couple which she stabbed him on the shoulder in the night he went to the hospital to received treatment. Early hours on Tuesday she slaughtered him while he was sleeping.Friends and family and fans please News reaching us now from Ibadan is that the Family of honorable fatoki is presently using all their influence in trying to cover the story of our murdered friend. And presently the story has changed the girl ,Yewande is saying she is innocent. The Husband family needs a lawyer who is skilled at such cases. This can not be covered. We must get justice even if they have the judiciary in their pockets is the sayings of the deceased . I cry out Hear my cry oh Nigerians this is cold blood murder help us.

Saudi police arrest 9 American 'terror' suspects

Saudi authorities have arrested nine American citizens among 33 "terror" suspects rounded up over the past days, the Saudi Gazette newspaper reported on Sunday.

Four Americans were arrested on Monday and five others over the past four days, the paper reported citing an unidentified source.

The arrests also included 14 Saudis, three Yemenis, two Syrians, an Indonesian, a Filipino, an Emirati, a Kazakhstan national and a Palestinian, the paper said.

It did not say if any of the "terror suspects" was linked to the Islamic State group, which has claimed several deadly attacks against security forces and Shiites in the kingdom in recent months.

On Friday, a suicide bomber attacked a Shiite mosque in Eastern Province killing four people before worshippers disarmed and tied up his accomplice who had fired on them.
IS, a radical Sunni group that considers Shiites heretics, did not claim that attack.
The Saudi Gazette said some 532 IS suspects accused of plotting attacks in the kingdom are being questioned ahead of their trial at the criminal court in Riyadh.
They are members of six cells arrested in "pre-emptive" raids across the kingdom and include a Saudi woman and a Filipina, the paper said.
Also on Sunday, the Saudi interior ministry said they were searching for nine suspects allegedly involved in an August suicide bombing that targeted a mosque inside a police headquarters, killing 15 people.
IS had claimed the attack in the southern city of Abha.
The ministry said in a statement that three other suspects, including a member of the kingdom's special forces, had been arrested in connection with the Abha mosque bombing.

The oil-rich kingdom offered rewards between one million riyals ($276,000) and seven million riyals ($1.87 million) for anyone who helps in the arrest of a suspect or thwarts an attack.

Boko Haram burns kids alive in Nigeria, 86 dead

A survivor hidden in a tree says he watched Boko Haram extremists firebomb huts and heard the screams of children burning to death, among 86 people officials say died in the latest attack by Nigeria's homegrown Islamic extremists.
Scores of charred corpses and bodies with bullet wounds littered the streets from Saturday night's attack on Dalori village and two nearby camps housing 25,000 refugees, according to survivors and soldiers at the scene just 5 kilometers (3 miles) from Maiduguri, the birthplace of Boko Haram and the biggest city in Nigeria's northeast.
The shooting, burning and explosions from three suicide bombers continued for nearly four hours in the unprotected area, survivor Alamin Bakura said, weeping on a telephone call to The Associated Press. He said several of his family members were killed or wounded.
The violence continued as three female suicide bombers blew up among people who managed to flee to neighboring Gamori village, killing many people, according to a soldier at the scene who insisted on anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to journalists.
Troops arrived at Dalori around 8:40 p.m. Saturday but were unable to overcome the attackers, who were better armed, said soldiers who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press. The Boko Haram fighters only retreated after reinforcements arrived with heavier weapons, they said.
Journalists visited the carnage Sunday and spoke to survivors who complained it had taken too long for help to arrive from nearby Maiduguri, the military headquarters of the fight to curb Boko Haram. They said they fear another attack.

Eighty-six bodies were collected by Sunday afternoon, according to Mohammed Kanar, area coordinator of the National Emergency Management Agency. Another 62 people are being treated for burns, said Abba Musa of the State Specialist Hospital in Maiduguri.

Boko Haram has been attacking soft targets, increasingly with suicide bombers, since the military last year drove them out of towns and villages in northeastern Nigeria.

The 6-year Islamic uprising has killed about 20,000 people and driven 2.5 million from their homes.