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Two female suicide bombers yesterday caused massive explosions at a crowded market in Maiduguri killing 45 people and injuring several others, witnesses and security sources said.
The two teenage girls, according to first witnesses, walked into the One-way area of Maiduguri’s main market at about 11:20am and one of them blew herself up killing about three women.
LEADERSHIP reporter learnt that the second girl waited for sympathizers to gather at the scene before detonating the deadly device hidden under her garment, killing about 30 persons.
Borno State coordinator of Civilian-JTF, Abba Aji Kalli, who spoke to our reporter on phone said: “I am right here at the scene and I have before me 11 corpses that have not been evaluated. Many have been taken away by relatives, while others were taken to the state specialist hospital. We have many people that are seriously injured after the two blasts.”
The Civilian-JTF chieftain explained that “from what one of the survivors told me while being helped to get to the hospital, the bombers were two girls dressed in full hijab. One of them detonated herself and about three persons all women were killed, and minutes after that when people came round to see what happened, another bomb went off after a girl screamed and many people, over 30 of them, got killed. We cannot say the exact figure for now because, even before our arrival here, some of the corpses had been taken away, while some, including that of the bombers, were mangled beyond recognition.”
Security operatives, comprising soldiers and police officers, cordoned off the area while rescue workers helped victims to get to the hospital.
Yesterday’s blast was the first to be recorded in Maiduguri since the last one that killed 56 people in the same market area on July 2, 2014, when a car laden with explosives blew up in the midst of traders coming out for their daily businesses.
The police authorities were yet to issue a statement on the blasts at the time of going to press, while the phone line of the police spokesman, Gideon Jubrin, was switched off.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility but suspicion will likely fall on militant group Boko Haram.
The market attack came a day after the Boko Haram militants took over another border town of Damasak in Mobbar local government area of the state.
Hospital officials say 54 victims admitted
Hospital officials in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State, have confirmed admitting 54 victims brought in from the scene of the twin blasts.
The executive secretary, Borno State Hospital Management Board, Dr Salisu Kwaya Bura, told Governor Kashim Shettima during his visit to the victims at the State Specialists Hospital that 54 people were on admission,
“Out of this number, 14 of them who were critically injured have been referred to the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital (UMTH) while 20 have been discharged,” Dr Bura disclosed.
The permanent secretary in the state’s ministry of health, Alhaji Sanda, had earlier briefed the governor that 24 bodies were brought to the hospital’s mortuary.
But security sources who got to the scene much earlier said that some corpses had been taken away from the scene by the relatives even before the rescue workers arrived.
Governor Shettima described the bombers as “wicked, barbaric and heartless,” and wondered why “they have chosen the poor traders and children as targets.”
Boko Haram kills 20 villagers in two Chibok communities
At least 20 villagers in communities around Chibok town of Borno State were on Monday evening killed by suspected Boko Haram gunmen who sacked the residents and burnt down their houses, security sources said.
Kamtahi and Galtimari villages under Chibok local government area came under attack when the gunmen invaded the town shooting and setting homes ablaze in the two neighbouring villages not far away from Chibok town.
Spokesman of the Nigeria Vigilante Group in Borno State, Muhammed Abbas Gava, told LEADERSHIP that “virtually every house in the two villages were burnt to ashes, while a total of 20 persons were killed in both villages of Kamtahi and Galtimari.”
Gava said his vigilante members from the area informed him about the attack yesterday when he made it to Maiduguri to intimate their state office about the unfortunate incident.
“The villages were totally burnt down as resident fled for their lives, some with injuries,” he said.
Chibok local government, which is the closes part of Borno State to Sambisa Forest, has suffered series of attacks of late that led to the desertion of villages, hamlets and farming settlements around the area.
The police and military officials in the state have not issued any statement concerning the latest attacks.
Police public relations officer in Borno State, Gideon Jubrin, told LEADERSHIP on phone that the command headquarters was not aware of the incident at the time of filing this report.
Cameroon closes 130 schools over Boko Haram
Cameroon officials have said that at least 130 schools have been closed as a result of Boko Haram attacks on schools near its northern border with Nigeria.
The country’s secretary in the ministry of Secondary Education, Monouna Fotso told Voice of America (VOA) that regular cross-border attacks had virtually halted academic activities along Cameroon’s 500 kilometre boundary with Nigeria’s Borno State, the stronghold of the militant group.
“Schools are a favourite target of Boko Haram, whose name means ‘Western education is sin,’” Fotso said, adding that due to insecurity, the country’s authorities have advised students and teachers to relocate.
“If there are some localities where the situation is so bad, at the level of the government we will relocate some schools. At that moment also, we will bring the staff and students to new sites. The objective of this Boko Haram is to traumatise our citizens,” Fotso added.
The border areas which have been hardest hit are Amchide, Fotocol, Kolofata and Kiti Matari. Ashigashia reported 30 percent of their schools had to close two months ago when Boko Haram occupied the town for three weeks before being dislodged by the Cameroon military.
Despite dispatching troops and cooperating with the Nigerian government, Cameroon has increasingly become both a staging ground and a casualty of Boko Haram’s five-year violent campaign to create a caliphate in northern Nigeria.
The country’s minister of Territorial Administration and Decentralization, Rene Emmanuel Sadi, also told the agency that the Boko Haram threat is choking the country.
He said Cameroon is suffering the collateral effects of a conflict that does not directly concern it, and that every day Cameroonians living along the borders with Nigeria are subjected to Boko Haram atrocities, including assault, rape and murder.
Displaced persons build new town in Adamawa
Meanwhile, thousands of displaced citizens from the Borno town of Gwoza have founded a new town in Adamawa State called Daware in Fofure Local Government Area, an online media, PRNigeria, has reported on its website.
With this new development, there are indications that many of these may never return to their original homes.
Gwoza, a vast local government in Borno State, has been consistently under attack since April this year when Boko Haram members fleeing from Sambisa Forest moved into their towns on motorcycles.
On May 30, 2014, the Emir of Gwoza, Idrissa Timta, was killed along with the Emir of Uba, Ismaila Mamza by armed men in Hawul LGA on their way to attend the funeral of the Emir of Gombe, Alhaji Shehu Abubakar.
And during the second week of August, the a son of Timta, who was installed after his father’s murder, fled the town after the terrorists finally overran the town, sacking the Police Mobile Force training school and declaring Gwoza the headquarters of their newly founded Caliphate.
A village head in Gwoza, Alhaji Idrissa Lawan, who is now a resident of Dawari following his displacement, told our correspondent in an interview that a majority of those who fled to Daware are no longer thinking of returning to their original homes.
Lawan told members of Journalists Against Disaster Initiative (JADI) on a mission to evaluate the condition of internally displaced persons in Adamawa State how the town of Daware came to habour the Gwoza natives.
According to him, a resident of Gwoza had fled to Daware and after a month he returned home. On his way back to his new place of abode, about 300 others followed him and the population has swelled to over 3,000 since then.
Although Daware had existed as a hamlet before now, the over 3,000 fleeing residents of Gwoza and its environs have now turned it into a small town.
Officials of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) and Adamawa State government only recently discovered the now sprawling community located off Yola-Mubi highway following the invasion of Mubi by the terrorists and a search was conducted to discover where the residents had fled to.
Insurgency will soon fizzle out, caused by ignorance – Governor Aliyu
Niger State governor Dr Babangida Aliyu has said that the insurgency in some parts of the country was caused by ignorance of the teachings of the two major religions in Nigeria.
He also asserted that that the insurgency is a temporary setback that would soon be over.
Aliyu who made the above comments when the Egyptian Ambassador in Nigeria Mr Asraf Salama paid him a courtesy visit at Government House noted that if the people committing violence were conversant with the teachings of their religion, they would know that no religion teaches violence but peace.
Sheathe your sword, Ohaneze begs Boko Haram
Ohaneze Ndigbo, Lagos chapter, has begged the Boko Haram sect to lay down its arms for the progress of Nigeria.
Speaking on behalf of the group, its president, Chief Fabian Onwualu, stated that no group or region was born to permanently rule the nation.
While on a visit to Chief Edwin Clark, the group also pledged their support to Goodluck Goodluck Jonathan’s second term in office, saying that the entire Igbo community in Lagos had pledged their unalloyed support for the president because of the many developmental projects he had have embarked upon.
“We have been observing very keenly the trends of what has been happening within Jonathan’s administration and we have come to a conclusion that the president has performed,” he stated.
In his response, Chief Clark commended called for the unity in the nation, and affirmed that the country belongs to all Nigerians.
“(There is) no superior and no inferior region in Nigeria. There is no nation that is superior or inferior to another, and that is why we are Nigerians. We all have equal rights irrespective of the region we belong to. Discrimination of any sort is intolerable and will not be accepted,” he said.
From - LEADERSHIP
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