Monday, February 23, 2015

At Least 5 Dead in Suicide Attack on Nigerian Market

2/23/2015

NAIROBI – At least five people died and 30 were wounded Sunday in a suicide attack staged by a woman at a market in the northeastern Nigerian town of Potiskum, according to what several witnesses told Nigerian media.

The attack came about 1:25 p.m. when the terrorist blew herself up at the market entrance after getting into a dispute with the guards who were attempting to search her at the security checkpoint.

“I heard a loud noise from my house. When we went outside, we saw that the people were removing bodies and transporting them to the hospital,” local resident Mohammed Abbas told Nigeria’s Daily Trust newspaper.

The spokesman for the police in Yobe state, where Potiskum is located, Toyin Gbadegesin, confirmed the attack but did not provide any casualty figures.

However, according to what several witnesses told the daily, the bomb killed at least five people and wounded more than 30.

Despite the fact that there has, as yet, been no claim of responsibility for the attack, the prevailing suspicion is that it was the work of the Boko Haram jihadist group, which in recent months has staged a number of deadly attacks in public places in Potiskum.

The terrorists carried out a similar attack on the same market on Jan. 11, when two girls blew themselves up killing seven people.

Despite the deployment of the regional military force to fight the terrorists, attacks by Boko Haram are not only continuing but have become more intense in northern Nigeria, and they have even spread into Niger, Chad and Cameroon, which border on Africa’s most populous country.


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