MAIDUGURI: As many as 26 persons were killed in a suicide bombing inside a mosque in northeast Nigeria’s city of Maiduguri late on Saturday.
The attack came hours after Boko Haram launched a separate attack, on the first full day of President Muhammadu Buhari’s term.
Buhari, who took the oath of office on Friday, vowed in his inaugural address to crush the Islamist insurgents whom he described as “mindless” and “godless”.
The mosque bombing in the Borno state capital was carried out by an assailant who pretended to be a worshipper joining afternoon prayers, police and witnesses said.
Earlier, the military repelled an overnight attack launched by insurgents who fired rocket-propelled grenades into homes in a bombardment that lasted several hours.
The bomber blew himself inside the Alhaji Haruna mosque next to Maiduguri’s Monday Market just after afternoon prayers began at roughly 3:30 pm (1430 GMT), Borno police chief Aderemi Opadokun and witnesses said.
Maiduguri-based vigilante Babagana Bulunkutu said several houses were destroyed as Islamist gunmen fired indiscriminately in Dala and two neighbouring suburbs.
A death toll for the overnight attack was not immediately available, but residents reported corpses being taken from homes.
