Leader of the Shiite Islamic Movement of Nigeria, Sheikh Ibraheem Zakzaky has blamed the military for Monday’s bomb attack on the Ashura procession in Potiskum, Yobe State.
About 30 people were martyred and 80 injured in the attack.
Speaking with reporters yesterday in Zaria, Kaduna State, Sheikh Zakzaky said he, on Sunday, alerted security agencies of a plan to attack the Ashura procession in Zaria.
He said: “The attack in Potiskum was pre-planned, as they did in Zaria on Quds Day, and the Movement had prior knowledge of the plan to be executed in Zaria, but it was least expected in Potiskum.”
The sheikh alleged that the bomb was thrown into the crowd by soldiers, who later came with armoured vehicles and shot at people at the Fudiyyah School.
He alleged that the plan was masterminded by Israel and the United States to clampdown on the Movement, adding: “Part of the plan was to use poisonous gas on the people during the procession from Tudunwada to Kwangila, in addition to planned bomb attack during the Zaria Ashura procession. Let them come out and dispute this claim. They are still bent on executing it. But we least expected an attack on the Potiskum procession. These people can do anything to satisfy their masters.”
Sheikh Zakzaky said the Potiskum attack was a continuation of the Zaria Quds “massacre”, adding: “Security operatives spent five months in Zaria planning the July 25 massacre. The plain clothes security operatives brought to Zaria for the aborted attack on Ashura have been withdrawn from the streets, but are still around contemplating the plan.”
He described the Zaria and Potiskum attacks as a shame on a nation, “which engages in war on its citizens to satisfy a foreign interest in exchange for worldly pleasure or reward”.
The cleric said: “If these people lived in the days of Imam Hussain, they would have done more harm to him than Yazid. There are Hussain and Yazid in every period. They are the Yazids of our time.”
He said: “The government is full of wild beasts, with an insatiable appetite for the citizens’ blood. They killed mostly children, dramatising the tragedy of Karbala. What we have is a heartless government backed by wild beast military with a license to kill. They cannot blame this atrocity on any group. We know it is them.”
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