Blasts hit Nigerian newspaper

Twin bombings hit the offices of the Nigerian daily newspaper This Day in two cities on Thursday, killing at least seven people, witnesses and officials said.

A suicide bomber detonated a car bomb at This Day's offices in the capital, Abuja, while a man threw an explosive device at an office in the northern city of Kaduna that houses This Day, The Moment and The Daily Sun newspapers. Later in the day, a third, smaller, bombing occurred in Kaduna, injuring three people.

"The suicide bomber came in a jeep and rammed a vehicle into the gate," said Olusogen Adeniyi, chairman of the This Day editorial board. "Two of our security men died, and the obviously suicide bomber died too."

"We have collected three bodies but before we got here people had already been moved," Nigerian Red Cross spokesman Nwakpa Nwakpa told Reuters news agency at the scene of the Abuja attack. A witness to the Kaduna attack said three people there were killed.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but the attacks are similar to others carried out by the radical Islamist group Boko Haram. It is blamed for the deaths of more than 440 people just this year.

This Day is sympathetic to President Goodluck Jonathan's government, which has been the main target of Boko Haram. An article published in 2002 that suggested the Prophet Muhammad would have married a beauty pageant contestant sparked rioting in Kaduna, killing dozens.

acb/sms (AP, Reuters)