A suicide bombing targeting a major Shiite festival in Yobe State on Monday has killed 15 people and injured some 50 others in a city that has been repeatedly attacked by Boko Haram, a local cleric told AFP.
“We lost 15 of our members in a suicide blast at the end of our Ashura procession,” said Mustapha Lawan Nasidi, the head of the Shiite community in the targeted city of Potiskum in Yobe state.
He said that 50 people were also injured and claimed that several others died when troops who deployed to the scene opened fire. There was no immediate response from Nigerian military.
No group has said it carried out the attack, but suspicion is bound to fall on militant Sunni group Boko Haram.
It denounces Shias, a minority in Nigeria, as non-Muslims.
The bomber detonated himself after joining worshippers who were marching to mark Ashura, a solemn day when Shias mourn the martyrdom of Hussein, a grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, in 680 AD at Karbala in modern-day Iraq, witnesses told the BBC Hausa service.
A police officer at the scene who requested anonymity told the AFP news agency: “It was a huge crowd and many of them were affected.”
Although witnesses reported that 20 people had died in the blast, a Shia representative said the explosion had killed 15 of them and the other five had been shot dead by the security forces.
About 50 people are said to have been wounded in the blast.
One man, Mohammed Gana, told Reuters news agency that his brother had been killed in the attack.
He advocates the creation of a Shia-oriented Islamic state in Nigeria, and his supporters have been involved in many clashes with the security forces over the decades.
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