Multiple explosions staged by suspected suicide bombers rocked the northeastern Nigerian city of Maiduguri, killing at least 23 people and wounding more than 100 others, police said Tuesday.
The three blasts, which struck the capital of Borno state on Monday evening, came after an attack on a military post overnight Sunday to Monday, which authorities blamed on suspected jihadists.
"Preliminary investigations reveal that the incidents were carried out by suspected suicide bombers," police spokesman Nahum Kenneth Daso said in a statement.
"Regrettably, a total of 23 persons lost their lives, while 108 others sustained varying degrees of injuries," he added.
Combined with the attack on the military position the evening prior and a mosque bombing in December, the assaults have wrecked a peaceful stretch in the city, which had become a relative oasis of calm as Nigeria's long-running insurgency was pushed to the rural hinterlands.
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The attackers reportedly struck Maiduguri's main market, the gate of the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital and an area around the city's Post Office flyover, just after Muslims broke their fast for the holy month of Ramadan.
The military blamed suspected Boko Haram "terrorist suicide bombers who detonated improvised explosive devices," spokesman Sani Uba said in a statement.
Nigeria's President Bola Tinubu on Tuesday said he had ordered his security chiefs to the city.
The "acts of terror are the final desperate and frantic attempts by criminals and terrorist elements trying to instil and spread fear" while under pressure from security forces, Tinubu said.
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A doctor at hospital told RFI's correspondent that it was "a chaotic situation due to the influx of numerous injured people", adding things were brought under control "thanks to the efforts and responsiveness of the hospital’s medical teams."
An AFP reporter at a city hospital on Monday evening saw multiple bodies covered by sheets on the sidewalk outside.
An anti-jihadist militia member told AFP the death toll from the explosions could rise to as high as 31.
Panic and chaos
Mala Mohammed, who escaped the market blast, said he initially heard two explosions and saw panicked people running.
"Many of them ran toward the Post Office area because the market entrance and the Post Office are not far apart. Unfortunately, as they were running towards Post Office, the person who had the explosive device ran into the crowd while people were still trying to escape," Mohammed said.
Police said in the early Tuesday morning statement that "normalcy has been fully restored in the affected areas" and that security forces have increased their "presence and surveillance across Maiduguri and its environs to prevent any further occurrences".
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Borno State Governor Babagana Zulum called the apparent bombings "barbaric" and said "the recent surge in attacks is not unconnected with intense military operations in the Sambisa forest," a known jihadist stronghold.
The earlier attack was launched around midnight Sunday into Monday, on a Nigerian military post in Ajilari Cross district, a southwestern suburb of Maiduguri and just a few kilometres from the city's airport.
That same evening there was an attack in the Damboa local government area, south of Maiduguri.
Maiduguri is the town where Boko Haram originated and launched its campaign to establish a caliphate in the country in 2009.
The violence slowed from its peak in 2015 but fighters from Boko Haram and rival jihadist group Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) have recently stepped up attacks in northeastern Nigeria.
Their 16-year campaign has killed more than 40,000 people and displaced around two million.
(with AFP and RFI)
