A bomb blast at a busy market in Nigeria’s northeastern city of Maiduguri has killed about 50 people, according to witnesses and hospital sources.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Tuesday’s explosion in the Gamboru cattle market, but there have been repeated attacks by the armed group Boko Haram in Maiduguri and the rest of Borno State. A military source told the Reuters news agency that the bomb, which was concealed under a butcher’s table in the market, went off at around 1pm, killing shoppers and passersby.
The market is visited by hundreds of people every day. A 12-hour curfew was imposed in the city overnight. Other attacks blamed on Boko Haram, including on a mosque, killed more than 30 people in Maiduguri over the weekend.
The violence poses a great challenge to the country’s new president, Muhammadu Buhari, who announced on Friday that he is moving the military’s headquarters from the capital Abuja to Maiduguri to better tackle Boko Haram.
