Series of explosions rip through Nigeria's Maiduguri town
A series of explosions rocked Nigeria's restive town of Maiduguri including an attack by suicide bombers on a military base, an Army spokesman said.
"They came with a black SUV to the Joint Task Force (JTF) headquarters and wanted to enter the complex but were not able to do so because of tight security," Lieutenant Colonel Hassan Mohammed, spokesman for the JTF, said and added that they ended up detonating the bombs about 50 metres from the gate yesterday.
"The suicide bombers naturally died in the explosion," he said. No one else was killed in the attack carried out by the bombers, who were three in number though there was damage to the building, the spokesman said.
Another bomb went off outside the office of the state State Security Service (SSS), he said. Mohammed said the fundamentalist Islamic group, Boko Haram, was behind the attack which took place during the time of Friday prayers just two days ahead of the annual Muslim celebration of Eid al-Adha, or the Feast of Sacrifice. The JTF had just concluded a house-to-house mop up of weapons in the restive town, which it polices and claimed to have recovered 5,000 assorted arms and ammunitions.
It said most of these arms and ammunitions were collected from the members of the public voluntarily while others were impounded during the search. Some arms and ammunitions were also dropped at different locations in the Maiduguri metropolis by unknown persons, officials said.
The Boko Haram sect had earlier claimed responsibility for the bombing of the United Nation's headquarters in the country's capital on August 26 which killed 23 people and injured over 70.
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