More than 30 people were killed on Tuesday when a bomb blast ripped through packed crowds in Yola, just days after Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari visited declaring that Boko Haram were close to defeat.
The explosion happened at about 8:20pm in the Jambutu area of the Adamawa state capital, although it was not yet clear whether it was caused by a suicide bomber or an improvised explosive device.
“So far, we’ve recorded about 32 dead and about 80 injured,” said Sa’ad Bello, the Yola coordinator for Nigeria’s National Emergency Management Agency.
The Red Cross and state police gave a slightly lower toll of 31 dead and 72 injured.
The blast bore all the hallmarks of Boko Haram, which has previously attacked Yola with suicide bombers and improvised explosive devices in recent months.
Buhari this month was in Yola to decorate soldiers for bravery in the counter-insurgency as well as visit a camp for people displaced by six years of violence that has left at least 17,000 people dead.
He told troops that he believed Boko Haram “are very close to defeat” and urged soldiers “to remain vigilant, alert and focused to prevent Boko Haram from sneaking into our communities to attack soft targets.”
Red Cross official Aliyu Maikano and residents said the area targeted was a truck park that also houses a livestock market, an open-air restaurant and a mosque.
The area was immediately cordoned off, but poor power supply in Yola meant the rescue effort was conducted in near darkness.
Tuesday’s blast was the first in Nigeria this month, indicating the army’s strategy to cut off the militants’ supply lines and target their camps was paying off.
Buhari has set his military commanders a deadline of the end of next month to crush the rebels, who have increasingly taken to attacking border areas of neighboring Chad, Niger and Cameroon.
However, the Yola explosion also shows the difficulty in completely neutralizing the threat, particularly in crowded urban areas.
Yola had been seen as a relative haven from the bloodshed across the northeast and last year housed hundreds of thousands who fled their homes as the militants advanced into Adawawa State.
The blast came as Boko Haram was named in the latest Global Terrorism Index as “the most deadly terrorist group in the world,” having killed 6,644 people last year.
The index, published by the Institute for Economics and Peace in Sydney, said the Islamic State group, to which Boko Haram has pledged allegiance, killed 6,073.
It highlighted “the major intensification of the terrorist threat in Nigeria” and said it had “witnessed the largest increase in terrorist deaths ever recorded by any country.”
Facebook activated its “Safety Check” feature for the first time in Nigeria after the bombing.
“We’ve activated Safety Check again after the bombing in Nigeria this evening,” cofounder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said in a post on the site.
The social network had come under criticism from those caught up in the Beirut blasts on Thursday last week who were not offered the service, but those in the Paris attacks the following day were.
The tool allows users to check whether friends are safe after attacks or natural disasters such as earthquakes.
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