Car bombing in Nigeria kills 18 at UN base

The Nigerian government has come under repeated attack by Boko Haram in the north and by militants in the south. Foreign oil companies and their workers have also been a common target of southern insurgents, who demand a greater share in the nation’s oil profits. But the deadly strike on the United Nations, the first on its offices in Nigeria, was a surprising turn.

“This act provides a new dimension to threats on the domestic front,’’ said Joy Ogwu, Nigeria’s ambassador to the United Nations, who called the attack a “transnational crime’’ and urged renewed efforts to fight terrorism in her country.

If indeed the work of Boko Haram, the attack lends substance to new concerns of officials and analysts that an inward-looking organization is increasingly adopting the methods and aims of global terrorists. The bombing, capping months of small-scale explosions and assassinations, mostly in the country’s north, is the most brazen attack yet.

“The logic of Boko Haram has been essentially inward looking,’’ said Chidi Anselm Odinkalu of the Open Society Justice Initiative, in Abuja. “To now seek to attack the UN entirely departs from the narrative they have so far constructed. That’s the most worrying thing about this. It makes Boko Haram an international threat.’’

In recent years, UN offices have been the targets of lethal attacks in Iraq, Algeria, and Afghanistan, and although the bombing was unprecedented for Nigeria, it did not come as a total surprise. UN officials said the organization had boosted security at all its buildings in Nigeria in the past month after receiving information that it could be a Boko Haram target.

Twenty-six UN agencies, including the UN Development Program, UNICEF and the UN Population Fund, maintained offices in the building, which is near the US Embassy. As many as 400 people may have been inside at the time of the attack, and the death toll was expected to rise, officials said.