About 20 lives is said to have been lost when a suicide bomber attacked a crowd of worshipers in northern Nigeria on Monday during a Shia festival.
The carnage took place during a procession to mark the Shia festival of Ashura in the town of Potiskum in Yobe state, North-Eastern Nigeria.
A resident of the town, Yusuf Abdullahi said prior to the suicide bombing, the attacker joined the line of Shi’ites before setting off his device as they marched through a market in the town.
Mohammed Gana, whose brother was killed in the attack, said he counted 23 bodies at the scene. “I heard a very heavy explosion as if it happened in my room. It took place just 200 metres from my house,” he said. Another person carrying an explosive that did not go off was arrested, he said.
With no group claiming responsibility, much suspicion will point towards Boko Haram, a terror group affiliated to al-Qaeda that seems to have created an aura of invincibility around them.
The bombing on Monday suggests that rivalry between Sunni and Shia has become another worrying factor in the country’s unrest. Boko Haram, a Sunni extremist group, considers the Shia strand of Islam to be a heresy.
The bomber joined the procession before detonating his device in the middle of the crowd, killing at least 20 people. “I heard a very heavy explosion as if it happened in my room. It took place just 200 metres from my house,” said Yusuf Abdullahi, an eyewitness, according to Reuters news agency.
The festival of Ashura marks the anniversary of the death of Hussein, a grandson of the Prophet Mohammed, at the Battle of Karbala in 680 AD. Celebrations of this occasion have often been targeted for attack in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Boko Haram’s campaign to impose its brand of Sunni fundamentalism on Nigeria has claimed at least 2,000 lives this year alone.
In another development, the movement is believed to have organised a prison break in Kogi state which freed 132 inmates. The same jail was attacked by Boko Haram in 2012.
Kogi state is found in central Nigeria, hundreds of miles away from Boko Haram’s heartland in the north. The prison break shows how the armed group’s tentacles have stretched across the country.
