Two people were injured in a blast outside in Maiduguri, Nigeria, in a third day of violence in the northeastern city, said Major-General Jack Nwaogbo, commander of the military task force in the area.
“The explosion was detonated in front of the customs office today, with two officials sustaining minor injuries,” he said by phone from the city. It may have been carried out by Islamic militants, he said.
The incident follows yesterday’s bomb attacks on bars in Maiduguri that killed at least 25 people. On June 25, gunmen shot dead two people in the city, including a Muslim cleric, the police spokesman, Lawal Abdullahi, said by phone today.
Authorities in northern Nigeria have blamed Boko Haram, which draws inspiration from Afghanistan’s Taliban movement, for a spate of bomb attacks and killings targeting government officials and the security forces since last year. The group claimed responsibility for a blast on June 16 at Nigeria’s police headquarters in the capital, Abuja, which killed at least five people and injured 11.
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation with more than 140 million people, is roughly split between a mainly Muslim north and a predominantly Christian south. More than 14,000 people died in ethnic and religious clashes in the West African nation between 1999 and 2009, according to the Brussels-based International Crisis Group.
Jun282011