12 Jun 2014

Nigeria shuts sports bars in effort to stop World Cup attacks

5:58 am on 12 June 2014

Soldiers in a Nigerian state at the heart of an Islamist revolt have shut down all venues preparing to screen live World Cup football matches, hoping to stave off the kind of attacks that have killed more than 20 people in the past two weeks.

Nigeria has seen an increasingly bold series of attacks over the past five years by the Islamist militants called Boko Haram, including the kidnapping of more than 200 schoolgirls in April .

Since then, militants have set off a car bomb that killed 18 people watching a game on television at a centre in the Adamawa settlement of Gavan at the start of the month.

A week before, a suicide bomber set out for an open-air screening of a match in Nigeria's central city of Jos.

His car blew up on the way, killing three people.

Such assaults on often-ramshackle television viewing centres across Africa have raised fears militant groups will target supporters gathering to cheer on the global football contest.