A bomb blast hit a cattle market in Nigeria’s northeastern state of Borno late on Saturday, with as many as 16 people dead, hospital and military sources said, in an attack that bore the hallmarks of dreaded Boko Haram militants, according to Reuters report.
Boko Haram has killed thousands of people and displaced some 1.5 million in an insurgency to establish an Islamic caliphate in the northeast of Nigeria but appears to have lost most of the territory it seized to government counter-offensives this year.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, which followed two weekend bombings that killed at least 30 people and also appeared to be the work of Boko Haram.
“At about 4:30 p.m. on Saturday they brought casualties from the blast scene …16 bodies were deposited with 24 injured,” Lawal Kawu, a paramedic at the teaching hospital in Maiduguri, told Reuters.
He said some of the injured were also in critical condition.
Zakariya Shettima, who lives nearby and arrived on the scene after the blast in the small community of Musari, on the outskirts of Maiduguri city, said he saw blood and body parts and that it had left a crater and destroyed several shops in the market.
Meanwhile, the Borno State Police Command on Sunday confirmed the killing of two persons after a suspected female suicide bomber detonated an explosive along Baga/Monguno.
The Commissioner of Police, Aderemi Opadokun, who spoke in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria in Maiduguri, said that four persons were also injured.
“A female suicide bomber detonated an Improvised Explosive Devise (IED) strapped on her body along Baga/Monguno highway, killing herself and two others on Saturday.
“Four persons sustained injuries during the attack,” he said.
He also confirmed an IED explosion near a military check point in Konduga Local Government Area, in which two persons were injured.
“It is true that we had a suspected IED explosion at Tungushe village in Konduga LGA on Saturday near a military check point. Two persons were injured and they are now being treated at the hospital,” he said.
Opadokun advised residents to be vigilant and report strange objects to the nearest security check point for action.
Suicide bombings by suspected members of the Boko Haram in Borno State have killed dozens of people in the past month as soldiers continue their onslaught on the group.
President Muhammadu Buhari has pledged to defeat the insurgents and already called for the transfer of the army command centre to Maiduguri, the state capital.
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