Bomb kills two, injures 33 in Maiduguri
IN MAIDUGURI, bomb hidden in a pile of scrap metal beside a busy road
has killed two people and injured 33 others in Maiduguri, northeast
Nigeria, military and hospital sources said on Wednesday.
The explosion, at around 1630 GMT, struck around 600 metres from army
barracks and it follows a spate of bombings in the city by militant
Islamist group Boko Haram that has killed around 80 people in the last
few days.
“Thirty-three people that sustained various degree of injuries were
brought to the hospital from the scene,” a source at a local hospital
told Reuters, adding that two dead people were evacuated.
Boko Haram has waged a six-year insurgency in the northeast of Africa’s
biggest economy and top oil exporter in a bid to establish an Islamic
caliphate.
At the start of the year it controlled a swathe of territory around the
size of Belgium, but the military says the group has been pushed back to
the Sambisa forest in recent weeks – which Boko Haram denied in a video
aired on social media on Tuesday.
New President Muhammadu Buhari, who visited his counterpart in Niger to
discuss the group, has vowed to defeat the militant Islamists.