One female suicide bomber killed seven people today, Sunday at a bus station in the northeast Nigerian city of Damaturu, the latest in a spate of similar attacks blamed on Boko Haram, police said.
“There has been an attack on the Damaturu Central Motor Park, Mayan Tasha, by a female suicide bomber,” said Marcos Danladi, the police commissioner of Yobe State, of which Damaturu is the capital.
“So far, 7 people have been confirmed dead and 32 others injured,” he said.
Witnesses said the assailant entered the motor park in a vehicle, got out and walked towards a small grocery store at the end of the terminal.
She then positioned herself amid the crowd outside the store and blew herself up, said one shop owner at the terminal, who requested anonymity.
The shop owner said that an angry mob prevented emergency workers from evacuating the remains of the bomber.
“They gathered the pieces (body parts) and set them on fire,” he said.
While there was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, suspicion immediately fell on Boko Haram.
Another witness, Adamu Muhammad said he heard a loud blast and the people at the Damaturu's central motor park "descended into panic."
He said there were many casualties, though he did not know how many.
The Nigerian military was not immediately available for comment. No one claimed the attack, which bore the hallmarks of Islamist insurgent group Boko Haram.
On Saturday, heavily armed Boko Haram militants attacked and attempted to overrun the northeastern Nigerian city of Gombe but were later repelled, reports Reuters.
The Islamists militants have been blamed for increasingly using women and girls as human bombs across northern Nigeria.
Bus parks and markets have been among the group’s preferred targets through its six-year uprising aimed at creating a hardline Islamic state in the north.
Nigeria’s general election, initially scheduled for this weekend, has been postponed for six weeks, with officials citing the Islamist conflict as a cause of the delay.
Boko Haram has also emerged as a growing regional threat.
Boko Haram's violent uprising for an Islamic state has killed thousands, destabilized the northeast of Africa's biggest economy and is increasingly doing the same to neighbors Cameroon, Chad and Niger.
They are now fighting back in a regional effort to crush the militant group.
The insurgency has also cast doubt over the leadership of President Goodluck Jonathan, who is seen as not having done enough to contain it or protect civilians, hundreds of whom have been killed and kidnapped.
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