Tragedy has once again hit the northeastern State of Borno Maiduguri on Tuesday, when a female suicide bomber detonated her bomb in a crowded market after a first blast.
The suicide bomber carried out her act a few moments after a first bomb was detonated close to the first spot.
Eyewitnesses said the second blast wreaked more havoc because people were rushing back to the scene along Baban-Layi axis of the main market to assist the victims of the first blast.
One witness who declined mentioning his name said the first bomb had been concealed in a parked vehicle.
First count put the casualty figure at above 45, although Clement Adoda, Borno State commissioner of Police, who confirmed the incident said he could not give an exact casualty figure at the time of this report.
“I cannot give you the exact number of casualties right now, as I am heading towards the blast scenes, but the reports I’m receiving right now as I speak indicates that several people were killed and injured in the sad and unfortunate blast,” he said.
Dogara Shehu, a health worker who claimed to have counted the bodies confirmed that they were more than 45, some of them completely decapitated.
A spokesman for Nigeria’s National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) confirmed that “many people have been killed” but did not have an official death toll.
