MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (AP) — Three suspected suicide bombings have killed at least 23 people and wounded 108 others in northeastern Nigeria, police said Tuesday. It was one of the deadliest attacks targeting the city of Maiduguri in recent history.
Residents and emergency services earlier told The Associated Press that the explosions were reported on Monday night in crowded places in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state, including at a major market and the entrance of the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital.
The wounded “sustained varying degrees of injuries,” Borno police spokesperson Nahum Kenneth Daso said in a statement, which blamed the attacks on suspected suicide bombers.
President Bola Tinubu, who left the country on Tuesday for a two-day state visit to the United Kingdom, expressed his condolences for the victims and directed security chiefs to “take charge of the situation” in Maiduguri.
“The Monday attacks were desperate acts of the evil-minded terrorist groups,” Tinubu said. “Our gallant military and civilian task forces will curtail and put them down.”
No group has claimed responsibility for the attacks, but suspicion quickly fell on the Boko Haram jihadi group, which in 2009 launched an insurgency in northeastern Nigeria to enforce their radical interpretation of Shariah, or Islamic law.
Boko Haram has since become stronger, with thousands of fighters and different factions, including the Islamic State West Africa Province, which is backed by the Islamic State group.
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