Blast hits Maiduguri, two dead

At least two people were killed in an explosion outside government offices in the northeast Nigerian city of Maiduguri on Thursday, a hospital spokesman and locals told AFP.

“We have two dead at the hospital and 24 injured,” said an accident and emergency spokesman for the Borno State Specialist Hospital after the blast at about 12:00 pm (1100 GMT).

Locals and street vendors said the explosion came from a passing motorised rickshaw and the Borno State Secretariat may not have been the intended target.

The Boko Haram Islamist group was founded in Maiduguri in 2002 and the city has been repeatedly attacked since the insurgency turned violent in 2009.

But a relative calm has returned to the city in recent months as a military counter-insurgency makes apparent gains against rebel strongholds across the northeast.

The last successful attack in Maiduguri was a double suicide bombing by two women at a mosque in Molai, on the outskirts of the city, in March in which 22 people were killed and 35 injured.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the latest blast or indication of its cause.

“It’s not clear how many people there were in the tricycle (rickshaw) but evidently the explosion was accidental,” said one man, who asked to remain anonymous.

“The tricycle was heading to another destination. The explosives went off prematurely.”

A vegetable trader outside the government offices added: “I was attending to my customers when I heard a loud explosion and instantly I knew it was an attack.

“I took cover. Moments later I realised the explosion was from a tricycle which blew up just metres away from the gate of the secretariat.

“It went up in flames and there was nothing but charred remains of the tricycle.”

Boko Haram has previously targeted government buildings and infrastructure in the insurgency, which has claimed at least 20,000 lives and made more than 2.6 million homeless since 2009.

It has also used suicide bombers to inflict maximum civilian casualties in attacks on “soft” targets such as mosques, crowded market places and bus stations.

On Wednesday, the Nigerian military said troops and civilian vigilantes prevented a suicide bomb attack at a mosque in Maiduguri’s Sulaimanti suburb.

Five civilians were injured during the attempt and bomb disposal specialists were called in to make safe the device the bomber was carrying, army spokesman Sani Usman said in a statement.