Multiple explosions staged by suspected suicide bombers rocked the northeastern Nigerian city of Maiduguri, killing at least 23 people and wounding more than 100 others, police said on Tuesday.
The three blasts, which struck on Monday evening, came after an attack on a military post overnight Sunday to Monday, which authorities blamed on suspected militants.
Combined with the attack on the military position the evening prior and a mosque bombing in December, the assaults have wrecked a peaceful stretch in the city, which had become a relative oasis of calm as Nigeria’s long-running insurgency was pushed to the rural hinterlands.
Fighters from Boko Haram and rival group Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) have recently stepped up attacks in northeastern Nigeria.
Their 16-year campaign to establish their rule in the country has killed more than 40,000 people and displaced around two million.
“Preliminary investigation reveals that the incidents were carried out by suspected suicide bombers,” police spokesman Nahum Kenneth Daso said in a statement.
“Regrettably, a total of twenty-three (23) persons lost their lives, while one hundred and eight (108) others sustained varying degrees of injuries,” he added.
A militia member told AFP the death toll from the explosions in the city could be as high as 31.
An AFP reporter at a city hospital on Monday evening saw dozens of wounded people seeking treatment, as well as multiple bodies covered by sheets on the sidewalk outside.
The attackers struck the city’s main market, the gate of the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital and an area around the city’s Post Office flyover.
Mala Mohammed, 31, who escaped the market blast, said he initially heard two explosions and saw panicked people running.
“At that moment, we were not sure what had happened. But after about two or three minutes, other people who were running along the road started shouting that it was a bomb at the market entrance.
“Many of them ran toward the Post Office area because the market entrance and the Post Office are not far apart. Unfortunately, as they were running towards Post Office, the person who had the explosive device ran into the crowd while people were still trying to escape,” said Mohammed.
‘Barbaric’ attacks
Police said in the early Tuesday morning statement that “normalcy has been fully restored in the affected areas” and that security forces have increased their “presence and surveillance across Maiduguri and its environs to prevent any further occurrences”.
Borno State Governor Babagana Zulum called the apparent bombings “barbaric” and said “the recent surge in attacks is not unconnected with intense military operations in the Sambisa forest,” a known jihadist stronghold.
The earlier attack was launched around midnight Sunday into Monday, on a Nigerian military post in Ajilari Cross district, a southwestern suburb of Maiduguri and just a few kilometres from the city’s airport.
That same evening, there was an attack in the Damboa local government area, south of Maiduguri.
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