A suspected female suicide bomber killed at least six people on Tuesday in Maiduguri, capital of Nigeria’s Borno state, military and hospital sources said, three days after a multiple bomb attack in the city killed more than 50 people.
Maiduguri is the birthplace of radical Islamist Boko Haram insurgents who have been fighting for six years to revive a medieval Islamic caliphate in northeast Nigeria. The militants tried to seize the city at the end of January, killing more than 100 people in the attack, and again in early February.
On Tuesday, a loud blast rocked Maiduguri just after 4 p.m. (1500 GMT) and a military source at the scene said a woman had detonated her bomb at a roundabout near the Monday Market, which has been attacked numerous times before.
Passer-by Abdulaziz Olawale, who was a few metres (yards) away when the bomb went off, said he believed it had been the work of a female suicide bomber, and that he had seen her charred and dismembered body.
“The place was very busy. Many people were waiting to pick up taxis and some were walking down the road when the blast occurred,” Olawale said.
The city of about 2 million people was hit by several bombs on Saturday, one of them inside the Monday Market, in an attack that bore the hallmarks of the Islamist militant group Boko Haram.
Suspected Boko Haram militants also attacked the town of Ngamdu on the border of Yobe and Borno states on Tuesday, killing at least a dozen people.