MAIDUGURI: A suicide bomber targeting worshippers at a mosque in a remote village in northeast Nigeria killed five people and wounded dozens, a security source said yesterday, in an area where Islamist insurgents are mounting attacks almost daily.
The source, who declined to be named, said Muslims in the village of Konduga were observing Friday prayers when the pick-up truck approached.
A local vigilante group stopped the truck to inspect it and the bomber then detonated the bomb a few metres away from the mosque, he said.
Witness Mohammadu Sheriff said he had seen the vigilantes conducting checks on a pick-up van carrying firewood.
“Suddenly it exploded,” he said on phone. “It would have been more devastating if the bomber had succeeded in driving near the mosque, which had over a thousand people in it.”
The Islamist militant group Boko Haram has killed hundreds since launching an uprising in 2009, and several hundred in the past two months, as it has stepped up a campaign against civilians in the northeast. Reuters
ABUJA: Nigeria’s military said yesterday that it had killed 53 Boko Haram Islamist fighters when it repelled an attack on a military base in the northeast Nigerian town of Damboa.
A statement from defence spokesman Major-General Chris Olukolade added that five soldiers and a senior military officer had also been killed in an exchange of fire on Friday night.
The military often reports high casualty figures for the rebels and relatively low ones on its own side. It is usually not possible to independently verify these reports.
reuters
