Jakana, Nigeria – Barely four days after insurgents attacked a police station at Jakana town in Konduga Local Government Area (LGA), Borno State, Nigeria, not less than 19 persons have been killed after an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) exploded on Wednesday at a local joint in the Kawuri community, in the same LGA. A policeman and one woman were killed in that attack while two patrol vans was also set ablaze.
The explosion also resulted in injuries to an unspecified number of residents. It is suspected that Boko Haram insurgents planted the device, causing chaos in the North-East part of Nigeria. A government official from the village who confirmed the incident to newsmen, said the bomb exploded around 8:05 p.m. at a local tea joint where villagers had gathered for an evening chat, adding that dozens of people were also injured in the blast.
“Nobody can say exactly how it happened, but we suspected that the bomb was planted, not a suicide attack. We saw corpses of 19 people with an unspecified number of civilians injured. The injured were evacuated to an undisclosed hospital in Maiduguri for treatment,” the source told newsmen on condition of anonymity.
The Kawuri community is situated about 50 kilometers from Maiduguri, the state capital. The incident happened just 24 hours after Shettima Mustapha, an accountant with the Local Education Authority in Damboa Local Government Area, was killed when his vehicle struck an IED on the Maiduguri-Damboa-Biu highway in Borno.