U.N. official visits Nigeria bomb victims

ABUJA (Reuters) - United Nations Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro visited the wounded on Sunday from a bomb blast at the U.N. headquarters in Nigeria that killed at least 23 people and injured dozens.

There has been no confirmed claim of responsibility for Friday's car bomb at the U.N.'s Abuja office, which blew out windows, gutted a lower floor and set the building alight in one of the most lethal attacks on the world body in its history.

As she visited the site of the blast before heading to the hospital, Migiro called the bombing "a shocking incident, an attack on global peace and communities," but also suggested there would be an investigation into the security breach.

"I have looked at the ripped-up gate. It is amazing how this happened and we are grappling with that, now ... an investigation is underway ... We will see what we have to do better," added Migiro, who accompanied by U.N. security chief Gregory Starr.

A U.N. spokesman accompanying Migiro at the hospital where the victims were being treated said the death toll had risen to 23, from an earlier estimate of 19 given by emergency services.

President Goodluck Jonathan declined on Saturday, when visiting the site, to say who could be behind the blast.

However, security sources suspect the violent Islamist sect Boko Haram, which has been blamed for almost daily bomb and gun attacks on security forces and civilians in the remote northeast.

If the group, whose name means "Western education is sinful" in the northern Hausa language, was responsible, it marks an increase in the sophistication of its attacks and a shift from local to international targets.

The car's driver died in the blast, possibly making it Nigeria's first suicide bombing.

The BBC said Boko Haram had contacted it to take responsibility for the attack, but such claims are hard to verify because the sect's command structure is opaque and many people claim to speak on its behalf.

Its activities have usually been confined to the northeast, on the threshold of the Sahara desert, where it has killed more than 150 people in bombings and shootings this year, although it claimed a car bomb at police headquarters in Abuja in June.

It says it wants Sharia law more widely applied in Nigeria, beyond the mostly Muslim north where some states have it, but until Friday had shown no interest in hitting Western targets.

Intelligence officials say they have evidence that some Boko Haram members have trained in Niger and have made contact with al Qaeda's North African wing, which may explain the move.

Jonathan tightened security after the attack and armed soldiers patrolled Abuja, searching cars at roadblocks across the city, which lies in the middle of the country where the mostly-Christian south and largely-Muslim north meet.