Two explosions ripped through a crowded mobile phone market in the
northeast Nigerian city of Potiskum on Sunday, residents said, a
day
after a car exploded outside a police station, killing at least two.
The
blasts rocked the Kasuwar Jagwal market within seconds of each other at
about 3:10 pm (1410 GMT) when business was at its peak but there were
no immediate indications of the number of casualties.
“The first
explosion happened inside the market and the second went off just
outside the entrance as people rushed out to flee,” said witness Ibrahim
Dambam.
It was not clear whether the blasts were caused by
suicide attacks or explosives left in the market, where new and
second-hand phones are sold and repaired.
Sunday is Potiskum’s market day and attracts traders and shoppers from all over Yobe State and beyond.
Another witness, Badaru Isa, said security operatives had taken over the site, which had been deserted.
“No-one can say how many people were affected by the blasts because everybody fled the area following the explosions,” he added.
Panicked
shoppers fled and traders abandoned their stalls at both the mobile
phone market and the city’s main market, which is just next door.
On
Saturday, a car exploded outside a nearby police station in the city,
killing the driver and a policeman. The vehicle was being escorted to
the facility after being stopped earlier at a checkpoint.
Hours
before that incident, at least 19 people were killed when a female
suicide bomber, thought to be aged just 10, exploded outside a market in
Maiduguri, the state capital of neighbouring Borno.
Boko Haram
were suspected of instigating the Maiduguri attack, as it has
increasingly used female suicide bombers in its violent campaign for a
hardline Islamic state in northeast Nigeria.
Car bombings and
explosions caused by devices left in crowded places have also been
hallmarks of its bloody, six-year insurgency.
In November last
year, a female suicide bomber killed 12 people in an attack on another
mobile phone market in the town of Azare, in nearby Bauchi state.
Potiskum,
the commercial capital of Yobe, has seen a spate of attacks by the
Sunni Islam radicals, including one against a Shia procession last
November which killed 15.
A week after that attack, at least 58 people were killed when a suicide bomber blew himself up a city secondary school.
Source:PM News
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