Eleven people were yesterday confirmed dead and 43 others injured in a twin bomb blast on the outskirts of Maiduguri, Borno State Capital.
At the blast scene, Daily Trust gathered from witnesses that two teenage girls suspected to be Boko Haram suicide bombers, had walked through a street of Muna, five kilometres away from the metropolis.
“Not knowing that they would later turn out to be Boko Haram girls, I really saw them walking along a street nearby. I even wanted to help them out, thinking both girls who looked like strangers were looking for a house where a wedding ceremony was taking place.
“But shortly after, I just heard an explosion which turned out to be from those two girls I had just passed by 20 minutes earlier, they were suicide bombers. I could have been their first victim,” one of the witnesses said in his Shuwa-Arab language.
The national and state emergency agencies, after the evacuation of the victims, placed the death toll at five while a civilian JTF personnel, who participated in the exercise, said they had evacuated eight corpses; while three out of the injured ones died at the hospital.
The NEMA’s spokesman in Maiduguri, Abdulkadir Ibrahim, in a statement yesterday, said: “Emergency response teams have confirmed that two female PBIED carriers detonated their explosives within five minutes interval at Muna-Dalti settlement yesterday evening (6/4/2019).
“As a result, three persons died and two bombers while close to 41 others sustained various degrees of injuries. The injured are currently receiving medical treatment at General Hospital Maiduguri.”
His SEMA counterpart, Usman Kachalla, said: “We have evacuated the wounded to the Specialist Hospital but unfortunately three persons dead at the spot (excluding the bombers) and 46 other are receiving medical attention at State Specialist Hospital.”
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Source: Daily Trust
