A bomber was killed on Tuesday in Nigeria’s northeastern city of Maiduguri while attempting to detonate an explosive targeting the military troops deployed to the area to quell the insurgency.
The field operational officer of the Joint Task Force (JTF), Colonel Victor Ebhaleme, said the bomb blast which went off at exactly 8:58 a.m. local time, killed the bomber while attempting to detonate an Improvised Explosive Device at Tarson Bala, London Chiki, a slum in Maiduguri metropolis.
Col Victor said the explosive was targeted at a military patrol vehicle very close to a densely populated residential area, but they were unable to hit any of the operational vehicles. “We had explosion at about 9 a.m. this morning, after which we quickly rushed to the scene of the incident where we discovered that a suspected Boko Haram sect member died in process of detonating an explosive device,” he told Xinhua.
According to him, the JTF men were able to recover some arms and ammunition from the vehicle which the suspected bomber drove before the explosion went off.
“Let me also inform you that we were able to rescue some women and children from one of the houses that went ablaze as a result of the explosion. Right now, there is no need to panic, we have brought the situation under control and the fire service men are trying to put off inferno,” he added.
But when Xinhua reporter visited the scene of the blast at about 5:30 p.m. local time, residents said two corpses were still laying on a street adjacent the spot of the blast. The spot could not be accessed by the reporter as stern-looking soldiers warned the reporter to stay clear from the areas.
Official at the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital (UMTH) disclosed that a charred body of a man was brought to the hospital morgue in the early hours of the day, while another corpse was brought later by the JTF troops.
“Two soldiers were brought to the Accident &Emergency department for treatment of injuries though not very serious. Then a corpse was brought to the morgue and two other corpses later but the other corpses brought later might have died as a result of gun shots, I don’t think he was a victim of bomb blast,” a hospital attendant told Xinhua.