Dozens killed in Nigeria market ‘suicide bombing’

By Al Jazeera

At least 32 people have been killed and 75 more wounded in a blast at a market in the northeastern Nigerian city of Yola, officials said.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, an emergency official said a suicide bomber carried out the deadly blast on Tuesday night in Yola, the capital city of Nigeria’s Adamawa state.

No one has claimed responsibility for the blast.

Speaking to Reuters, Usman Abubakar, a state police spokesman, said the bombing “occurred at the Jimeta by-pass”, an area full of civilians.

“The explosion happened in the midst of a large crowd because the area houses a livestock market, an open-air eatery and a mosque,” Red Cross official Aliyu Maikano told AFP.

“So far we don’t have any definite number of dead but we evacuated the dead and the injured to hospitals,” Maikano said. “Our main preoccupation now is to save the injured.”

Describing the scene, he said: “Victims could be lying all over the place.”

The armed group Boko Haram has previously attacked Yola with suicide bomb and improvised explosive devices.

Tuesday’s bombing came less than a month after at least 55 people died when suicide bombings struck two mosques in different cities in northeast Nigeria.

A massive blast on October 24 in Yola killed 27 people during a Friday afternoon prayer that included officials helping to inaugurate a new mosque, the National Emergency Management Agency said.

Earlier on the same day in the city of Maiduguri – the capital of Borno state and birthplace of the armed group Boko Haram, another suicide bomber killed 28 people in an attack on a mosque.

Last Friday, President Muhammadu Buhari was in Yola to decorate soldiers for bravery in the fight against Boko Haram as well as visit a camp for people displaced by six years of violence that have left at least 17,000 people dead.

He told troops he believed Boko Haram “are very close to defeat” and urged soldiers “to remain vigilant, alert and focused to prevent Boko Haram from sneaking into our communities to attack soft targets”.

Source:: Al Jazeera

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