Bomb attacks hit northeastern Nigeria town
January 11, 2015
Two blasts tore through a crowded market in the northeast Nigerian city of Potiskum in Yobe State on Sunday in an apparent suicide bomb attack.
A security official said that six people, including two female suicide bombers, were killed in the attack, with several others injured.
"We evacuated six bodies, including those of the two female suicide bombers, to the hospital. Twenty-one people were injured in the attacks," the offical said, adding that the bombers looked to be around 23 and 15 years old.
An attack on Saturday in the capital of neigboring Borno State, Maiduguri, in which at least 18 people died, is also thought to have been carried out by a young girl of just ten.
Both Sunday's and Saturday's attacks bore hallmarks of the Islamist group Boko Haram, which has increasingly used female suicide bombers in its violent six-year campaign to establish an Islamic state in northeast Nigeria.
The market attack in Potiskum comes after another attack in the city on Saturday, in which a car exploded ouside a police station, killing the driver and a policeman.
Potiskum has seen a spate of attacks by Boko Haram, which is composed of radical Sunni Islamists.
An attack on a Shiite procession in the city last November killed 15, while a suicide bombing at a city secondary school a week later claimed at least 48 lives.
tj/msh (AFP, Reuters)