SPREADING TERROR: A screen grab taken on Saturday from a video obtained by AFP shows a man claiming to be the leader of Nigerian extremist group Boko Haram Abubakar Shekau. (AFP)

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria: Boko Haram claimed responsibility for the deadliest attack ever in Nigeria’s capital in a video obtained Saturday, as the search continued for 85 schoolgirls still missing after a mass abduction by terrorists.
The bombing at a bus station packed with morning commuters early on Monday killed at least 75 people on the outskirts of Abuja, hours before gunmen kidnapped 129 girls from a school in northeastern Borno state, Boko Haram’s base.
Officials said a total of 44 have since escaped and are now safe.
The shock of the bombing and the kidnapping, which have broad worldwide condemnation, have underscored the serious threat posed by the insurgents to Africa’s most populous country and wealthiest economy.
“We are the ones that carried out the attack in Abuja,” Boko Haram’s leader Abubakar Shekau said in video message obtained by AFP.
“We are in your city but you don’t know where we are.” Shekau, declared a global terrorist by the United States, which has a $7 million (5.1 million euro) bounty on his head, spoke in Arabic and the Hausa language that is dominant in northern Nigeria.
The 28-minute video made no reference to the abductions from the Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok but the military, local officials and girls who have escaped have blamed that attack on Boko Haram.
Borno’s education commissioner Inua Kubo told journalists late on Friday that 14 more girls had been found, leaving 85 girls still missing.
Some girls had escaped immediately after the kidnapping, jumping off the back of a truck as the Islamists tried to cart them away under the cover of darkness.