Two bomb attacks in Nigeria’s northeastern city of Potiskum killed 10 people on Monday, eyewitnesses and a hospital source said.
The first bomb exploded at around 1 p.m. (local time) in the office of a group set up to defend local people against such attacks, eyewitnesses said. A suicide bomber detonated a device at an outdoor tea drinking area a few minutes later.
“I heard a loud sound… It shook the whole of the area,” said Babagana Aminu, a shopkeeper based near the first bomb site, told Reuters by telephone.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility but the bombings bear the hallmarks of attacks by Boko Haram, the militant group that has tried to set up a separate state in the northeast of Africa’s top oil exporter during a six-year insurgency.
In neighboring Chad, the government blamed Boko Haram for two attacks in the capital N’Djamena on Monday which killed 27 people, including four suspected fighters from the militant group.
A source in Potiskum hospital said a total of 10 people — eight males and two females — were killed in the attack in the explosions in northern Nigeria.
Last week new President Muhammadu Buhari convened a summit in Abuja with counterparts from Chad, Niger, Benin and Cameroon to set up a regional task force to fight Boko Haram.
At the start of this year the militants controlled an area of northeast Nigeria around the size of Belgium but the military said it had pushed them out of most of those areas, at times with the help of troops from neighboring countries.
A spate of bombings in the northeast has marked an apparent resurgence of Boko Haram that has seen around 100 deaths in the last few weeks.
