Female suicide bomber kills self, others in Yobe

BARELY a week after a female suicide bomber killed 15 people in Damaturu, Yobe State, another suspected female suicide bomber has blown herself up at a Potiskum Global Mobile Communication System (GSM) and killed five other persons. 

  About 48 people were said to have been injured in the incident that occurred at 1.15pm Sunday.

  According to Hamidu Usman, a handset repairer, the blast occurred at the entrance of the market, when the suicide bomber defied being “screened and checked” before entering the market. She detonated the Improvised Explosive Device (IED) hidden in her flowing veil.

“We saw the girl and we became suspicious of her movement, and when one of us tried to whisk her away, the bomb went off killing both of them and three others while many others sustained injuries. The injured people have been taken

to the general hospital in Potiskum,” Usman told The Guardian Sunday in a telephone interview. 

  The Yobe State Police Command, Public Relations Officer, Toyin Gbadegesin, also confirmed that a suspected female suicide bomber alighted from a tricycle, and forcefully defied checking at the market entrance and blew herself up yesterday afternoon.

He said details of casualties were yet to be collated, as the rescue team of the Nigerian Red Cross as well as military and police personnel were still evacuating bodies of victims from the blast scene.

  Gbadegesin said: “Yes, I can confirm to you that there was a blast at the Kasuwan Jagwal Market (GSM market) in Potiskum where it happened last month, but how it happened and the casualty figure have not been ascertained.”

  An attendant at the Emergency and Accident Unit of the Potiskum General Hospital said that members of the rescue teams had started bringing those injured in the blast for urgent medical attention.

  It was learnt that suicide bombing in the commercial city of Potiskum has become rampant. It was gathered that this year alone, more than 75 people have been killed, with 165 hospitalised at the Federal Medical Centres in Nguru and Azare, and the Sani Abacha Specialists Hospital, Damaturu, the state capital.