Boy triggers grenade explosion that kills nine on Nigeria-Cameroon border

By : Abisola Olasupo

Date: 7 January 2020 1:13pm WAT

Immigration officers walk on a suspension bridge built in 1948 that connects Nigeria with Cameroon at Mfum border station in Cross Rivers State, southeast Nigeria on February 1, 2018. The UN refugee agency on February 1, 2018 criticised Nigeria for breaching international agreements after the leader of a Cameroonian anglophone separatist movement and his supporters were extradited at Yaounde's request. Cameroon's government is fighting an insurgency by a group demanding a separate state for two regions that are home to most of the country's anglophones, who account for about a fifth of the population. Thousands of Cameroonians fled to the remote border region with Nigeria to escape from the violences in English-speaking southwest Cameroon. / AFP PHOTO / PIUS UTOMI EKPEI

A grenade explosion has killed at least nine Nigerians and injured 26 others on a border bridge linking Nigeria and Cameroon.

The governor of Cameroon’s Far North Region, Midninyawa Bakary, told BBC that the blast happened when a child, reportedly under the age of 10, found a grenade in a bin and mistook it for scrap metal.

A resident of Gamborou, a town in the Nigerian side of the border, said the boy was playing with the grenade when it exploded and killed him and the people around.

Bakary said all the dead were Nigerians but there were several Cameroonians among the wounded. The injured have been taken to a local hospital in the area.

Security officials have also begun investigations on how the explosive device got in the bin and if there were other motives behind the explosion.

The area is an important hub for traders linking north-eastern Nigeria with Cameroon.