An explosion in the red light district of
northern Nigeria’s Bauchi city has killed 10 people and injured 14
others, police said Saturday.
The cause of the late Friday blast
was not immediately clear, but Boko Haram have attacked Bauchi
repeatedly during their five-year uprising aimed at creating a strict
Islamic state in the north.
Bauchi state police spokesman
Mohammed Haruna said the targeted building in the Bayan Gari
neighbourhood on the outskirts of the city was widely known as a
brothel.
“Ten people were confirmed dead, while 14 others
sustained various degrees of injury,” Haruna said, adding that the
explosion went off at roughly 10pm.
“The entire area has been cordoned off and (the) scene secured,” Haruna said.
Bomb
attacks on targets which Boko Haram has branded sinful — including
bars, churches and schools teaching a Western curriculum — have formed a
major part of the insurgency.
Nigeria has estimated that more than 10,000 people have been killed since the conflict began in 2009.
The violence has escalated in recent months, with more than 2,000 deaths recorded since the start of the year.
The
capital Abuja has been hit with three separate bomb attacks since
mid-April, most recently on Wednesday when 24 people were killed in a
blast at a popular shopping plaza in the heart of the city.
Police had initially given a death toll of 21 for the attack, but the health ministry revised those figures upwards on Saturday.
In
Kano, the largest city in the mainly Muslim north, a bomb planted in
the parking lot of a public health college killed eight people on
Monday.
The extremists have received unprecedented international
attention in recent weeks following their April 14 abduction of more
than 200 teenage girls from the town of Chibok in the northeast.
The
gruesome mass abduction has drawn condemnation from governments and
prominent people worldwide and offers of military help from major world
powers to boost Nigeria’s counter-insurgency effort.
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