Kano, Nigeria:
At least 18 people were killed and 19 seriously injured in a suicide attack in northeastern Nigeria on Saturday. This information was provided by the emergency services. In one of the three explosions in the town of Gwoza, a female attacker carried a child on her back and detonated explosives in the middle of a wedding ceremony, according to a police spokesman. Other attacks in a Cameroonian border town targeted a hospital and a funeral for victims of an earlier wedding bombing, officials said.
According to the Borno State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA), at least 18 people were killed and 42 others injured in the attack. “So far, 18 deaths have been reported, including children, men, women and pregnant women,” agency head Barkindo Saidu said in a report seen by AFP.
Saidu said in the report that 19 “seriously injured” people had been taken to the regional capital Maiduguri, while 23 others were awaiting evacuation. A member of the militia supporting the army in Gwoza said two of his comrades and a soldier were also killed in another attack on a security post, although officials did not immediately confirm the number. Boko Haram militants seized Gwoza in 2014, after the group seized large parts of northern Borno.
Nigerian forces recaptured the town in 2015 with the help of the Chadian army, but the group has since continued attacks from the mountains near the town. Boko Haram has raided here several times, killing men and abducting women going out of town in search of fruit.
The violence has killed more than 40,000 people and displaced nearly two million people in northeast Nigeria. The conflict has spread to neighboring Niger, Cameroon and Chad, leading to the formation of a regional military coalition to fight the militants.