Sunday July 5, 2015 was just like any normal day of worship. Christians had gone to church that day to worship God while Muslims were still observing the Ramadan. Residents of the city were looking forward to the beginning of a new working week as they concluded activities for that Sunday.
Unknown to some of them, the end was in sight, in the form of terrorists who had chosen the beautiful tin city for a deadly attack! Jos had been rocked by deadly bomb attacks in the last few months, though residents had gradually started adjusting to life without such ugly incidents. The targets of the murderers were Yan Taya Mosque and a densely populated area on Bauchi Road, both in the state capital.
A sermon was going on at the mosque when suddenly, sounds of gunfire could be heard. Without warning, a blast shook the air. Ismail Musa, a 12 year old lad, was inside the miosque listening with rapt attention to Sheikh Yahaya Jingir’s sermon when he heard the shooting. Within minutes, an explosion shattered the peace in the mosque.
Narrating his experience to Sunday Telegraph on his bed at the Plateau State Specialist Hospital in Jos, he said, “I was inside the mosque listening to the message of Shiek Yahaya Jingir. All of a sudden, there was shooting everywhere. Within minutes, there was a bomb blast. But I thank God I survived. I crawled out and lay down in a small place outside the mosque.
“As you can see now, I have several injuries, but i thank God I’m alive since many lost their lives.” Sunday Telegraph gathered that two people approached the mosque shooting, accompanied by a third person who detonated an Improvised Explosive Device.
Another survivor was Hassan Ahmed, who sustained gunshot wounds and was admitted to the same hospital. He told our correspondent that as far as he could recollect, two men fired shots as they approached the mosque, apparently trying to make way for the bomber to gain entrance into the packed mosque. The preacher appeared to be the target of the terrorists but the bomber was unable to get to him before the IED went off.
Ahmed said, “These people came shooting in the air and at the people just outside the mosque. They also fired at others inside the mosque. Some people got up and tried to flee while others lay down flat, to avoid the shots. In the midst of the confusion, I was shot in my left arm. I fell down and shortly afterwards, I heard the explosion.
“I later learnt that a third person detonated the bomb in the mosque but not yet within reach of the sheikh. He killed himself and people that were close to him.” Ahmed said he could not fathom why the terrorists attacked the mosque at the Sunday night Tafsir. “These are heartless individuals who have lost feeling for human life.
“These people have come to kill and to injure people. For the injury I have suffered in the hands of these people, I leave them to God to take my revenge,” Ahmed added. Ahmad Isah, who lost his father, Alhaji Isah Adam, in the blast, described the incident as “shocking.” When asked how his family got news of the incident, he said,”We were shocked when we got the news. Our father normally goes out on Sunday but that day he decided to attend the Tafsir at Yan Taya. Suddenly, he met with his death.
My last encounter with him was in the morning of Sunday. It is unfortunate. “My father was 57 years old. He left behind 10 children and one wife and it is not going to be easy for us because he is no more.” Mohammed Rabiu, who lost his brother, 40 year old taxi driver, Isa Rabiu, said, “I was outside the mosque when some persons appeared and started shooting. I had to run for my life.
After I had left the place, I heard the explosion. It killed people in the mosque including my brother Isa Rabiu. He had one wife and five children. Now, I don’t know what is going to happen to the family because he was our pillar.” The attack on the mosque was the second incident that night in Jos. Umma Umar, a stewardess at Shagalinku Restaurant where the first bomb blast occurred, said she escaped death by a whisker.
Though she did not receive any visible external injury, she was obviously not herself when Sunday Telegraph stood at her bedside. A relief worker and Plateau State director of first aid group, Fitiyanu Islam of Nigeria, Abdullahi Dauda, told our correspondent that she suffered shock from the blast and needed to be hospitalized. Relating her experience to Sunday Telegraph, Umma said she heard an explosion but that she remembered nothing afterwards.
“I heard ‘gboom’ and passed out. I must have fallen after the explosion but I can’t really remember anything that may have happened afterwards,” she said.
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