Five wounded in Maiduguri suicide bombing

By : AFP

Date: 8 April 2017 4:38pm WAT

Forensics cover a dead body and clear the scene of a blast in Maiduguri on February 17, 2017. As many as seven suicide bombers, including six women, tried to attack the northeast Nigerian city of Maiduguri but only succeeded in blowing themselves up, emergency services officials said on February 17, 2017. STRINGER / AFP

Five people were wounded and two female suicide bombers died Saturday in an attack outside a mosque in northeastern Nigeria, local police said.

The women wearing explosive belts died after one activated her explosives when stopped trying to enter a mosque near a federal court in Maiduguri, said Borno police spokesman Victor Isuku.

“Following an explosion close to a mosque… emergency teams evacuated the bodies of two women,” Abdulkadir Ibrahim of the National Emergency Management Agency in the region told AFP.

The northern Borno state has been gripped by an insurgency of Boko Haram Islamists, a faction of which is affiliated with the Islamic State group.

More than 20,000 have been killed and 2.6 million have been displaced since the beginning of the rebellion in 2009.