Bomb blasts kill 61 in Maiduguri, Yola mosques

FROM TIMOTHY OLANRE­WAJU, MAIDUGURI FROM DAVID MOLOMO , YOLA

Blood dripped yesterday in the ancient towns of Mai­duguri, the Borno State capital, and Yola, Ad­amawa State capital, as bombers suspected to be members of Boko Haram sent over 60 persons to their early graves.

It started in Maiduguri, where a male suicide bomber ran into a mosque in busy area of the metropolis and deto­nated explosive devices, which killed at least 11 worshippers.

Residents of Jidari-Polo area of Maiduguri said they were woken up by a loud sound from a bomb explo­sion from a mosque in the early hours of Friday, causing panic among the people in the area. The picture became clearer few minutes later when they discovered that bomb blast by a sus­pected Boko Haram suicide bomber has killed some and injured many of the worshippers in the mosque, a resi­dent, Jonas Ibrahim told Saturday Sun.

Northeast Zone Coordinator of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), Alhaji Mohammed Kanar while confirming the incident said six people including the suicide bombers were killed in the blast. A source at the Borno State Specialists Hospital also confirmed six dead bod­ies were brought into the mortuary. The source however said three out of the four critically injured persons later died.

Spokesman of the youth vigilante group, Civilian JTF, Bar Jubrin Gum­da also said 11 corpses were evacuated from the scene by a combined team of police, military personnel and rescue workers including his members.

A rescue worker and two residents of the area who did not want their names in print however told Saturday Sun the casualty is as high as 22, claiming that some relations picked up the corpses of their deceased families as soon as evacuation commenced. “Some people decided to pick the corpses of their loved one as soon as they identi­fied them,” said one of the residents, a claim Saturday Sun independently could not verified as at press time.

The Jidari mosque suicide attack came barely a week after similar bomb attacks on two mosques in Molai, out­skirts of the city centre killed 24 peo­ple, and fueling speculations among residents that Boko Haram bombers may have infiltrated the city.

In the same vein, bomb blasts dur­ing Jumma’t prayer in a new mosque in the popular Jambutu, a settlement in Yola, claimed over 50 lives ,while tens of worshippers were hospitalized at the Federal Medical Centre Yola and Specialist Hospital in the capital city.

Although, there have been conflict­ing figures from various segments of the society, based on reports from the social workers and non governmental organisations that thronged the scene of the incident.

The state Commissioner of Police, CP Gabriel Adaji, who visited the scene declined to give the dead toll to Saturday Sun, but eyewitnesses said between 50 and 60 persons were killed by the blasts

The Coordinator of National Emer­gency Management Agency (NEMA), in the state, Alhaji Sa’ad Bello, dis­closed that 27 victims of the blast died while 96 hospitalized.

However, eye witnesses told Satur­day Sun that over 50 persons mighty have been killed in the explosion, as the Specialist Hospital and the Federal Medical Centre, in Yola, were receiv­ing dead bodies in their mortuaries, while medical personnel were attend­ing to victims ,which they described as, “unprecedented bomb blast.”

One of the eye witnesses, who lives in the IDP camp, which is about 100 metres away from the blast site ob­served that the casualty figure was higher than the perceived figure al­leged.

Investigation by our reporter , indi­cated that the injured were receiving medical attention at the Federal Medi­cal Center Yola and the state specialist hospital.

Governor Mohammed Umaru Ji­brilla Bindow was one of the early sympathizers to the site and expressed dismay over the attacks.