Two explosions rocked northeast Nigeria on Saturday, including one in a crowded market involving a female suicide bomber thought to be 10 years old, as the US condemned a bloody spike in suspected Boko Haram violence.
At least 19 people were killed at what is known as the Monday Market in the Borno State capital, Maiduguri, at about 12:40pm, when it was packed with shoppers and traders.
Hours later, a suspicious vehicle that had been stopped at a checkpoint outside the city of Potiskum, in neighboring Yobe State, exploded at a police station as its driver was being taken in for questioning.
A police officer accompanying the car and the driver were killed, an officer said. Potiskum has been a repeated target for militant violence.
The blasts came a week after a major Boko Haram attack on the fishing town of Baga in northern Borno State, which is believed to be the worst in the bloody six-year insurgency.
The town and at least 16 nearby settlements in and around Lake Chad were burned to the ground and at least 20,000 people forced to flee their homes.
“For 5km, I kept stepping on dead bodies until I reached Malam Karanti village, which was also deserted and burned,” survivor fisherman Yanaye Grema said.
However, there was no independent corroboration of the huge numbers of dead cited locally.
The US Department of State said Boko Haram’s recent escalation of attacks on civilians “shows no regard for human life” and called for those responsible to be brought to justice.
“The United States abhors such violence, which continues to take a terrible toll on the people of Nigeria and the broader region, including Cameroon,” it added.
Boko Haram is suspected in the attack in Maiduguri as the group has increasingly used women and young girls as human bombs in its deadly campaign for a Muslim state.
Self-described civilian vigilante Ashiru Mustapha said the blast happened as the girl was being searched at the entrance to the market.
“The girl was about 10 years old and I doubt if she actually knew what was strapped to her body,” he told reporters.
“The blast split the suicide bomber into two and flung one part across the road... Among the dead are two vigilantes who were searching the girl. I am pretty sure the bomb was remotely controlled,” witness Abubakar Bakura said.
“Many people sustained life-threatening injuries,” a Red Cross official who declined to be named said.
Borno State police spokesman Gideon Jubrin told reporters 19 people were killed and 18 others were injured but said that the death toll could rise.
The market in the Borno state capital was cordoned off as health officials began the grim task of sifting through the wreckage and collecting body parts.
An attack at the same market on Dec. 1 last year killed more than 10 people, and a week earlier more than 45 people lost their lives in an attack there.
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