Deadly suicide attack targets bus station in Nigeria
At least three people killed after a woman attempting to get on a bus detonates bomb strapped around her waist.
A woman suicide bomber has killed two passers-by and her accomplice in an attack in northeast Nigeria, witnesses and security sources have told AFP news agency.
Moments before the explosion, the female attacker and her accomplice, had tried to board a bus but were stopped by the driver.
“The suicide mission took place at around 11:30 am when two women wearing hijabs tried to board a commercial vehicle but the wary driver resisted,” a highly-placed security source said on Saturday.
“One of the women was wearing the bomb around her waist and it exploded after the bus departed, killing the other woman and two other people,” the source added.
According to witnesses, the two women tried to board the bus in the village of Ngamdu, 90 km from Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state, and 40 km from Damaturu, the capital of the neighbouring state of Yobe.
“The two women were wearing the hijab and they told the driver they wanted to go to Damaturu,” said a witness Sharu Hassan, a Ngamdu resident.
After the explosion, residents of the village shut themselves up in their homes leaving the four dead bodies on the road, witneses said.
Earlier this week, a suicide bombing in the northeast Nigerian town of Biu killed at least 19 people and injured 17, a day before the President Goodluck Jonathan made a visit to another town in another state hit by violence.