Females have blown up terrible blasts in the Borno State of northeastern Nigeria, with at least 18 people dead and many others injured, suspected to be suicide bombers. The IED attacks were carefully planned and simultaneously with the coordinated suicide attacks that hit a wedding ceremony, a hospital and a funeral in the town of Gwoza, which is bordering Cameroon.
The first incident occurred around 3:45 pm on Saturday. A woman suspected to be a member of the Boko Haram sect burst a checkpoint while carrying a baby on her back and blew up an improvised explosive device, IED, at the motor park. After this, the same group of demonstrators again struck and stoned a hospital in the same city. A third blast occurred even at the funeral of blast victims of the wedding blast, the authorities said.
‘Up to now, 18 people, including children, men, females and pregnant women, have been confirmed dead,’ said Barkindo Saidu, the head of the Borno State emergency agency. Nineteen very badly injured persons were moved to Maiduguri, the capital, and 23 others are still being evacuated.
The northeastern part of Borno state has been devastated by operations of Boko Haram terrorists and its offspring group known as the Islamic State West Africa Province for more than a decade. However, the Nigerian military has, over the years, tried to weaken these armed groups’ capacity, yet they remain a menace to civilians and security agencies.
Previously, in 2019, at least 30 people were killed in the triple suicide attack, which makes it one of the deadliest attacks by suicide bombers in that year. Ideally, Boko Haram, throughout the insurgency, has employed young women and girls as suicide bombers.
The conflict in Nigeria’s northeast has since been responsible for perhaps over 40,000 deaths, and over two million people have been displaced from their places of abode. The conflict has also affected neighbouring countries where the armed groups have also extended their aggression, thus leading to the formation of a regional military coalition.
Amidst this new pain, the people of Borno State have fallen to the murderous acts, and the nation has to come to grips yet again with how one can be so inhuman to kill the innocent.
