A bomb exploded in the main market in Nigeria’s northeastern city of Yola killing 31 people, Nigeria’s disaster response agency said on Friday, in an attack blamed on the extremist Boko Haram group.
Another 38 victims, some with serious injuries, are being treated in the hospitals in this city already swollen with refugees from the conflict, Sa’ad Bello of the National Emergency Management Agency said.
“I can see blood splattered everywhere, including my car, but I can’t give any detail because we are all running,” bread seller Ayuba Dan Mallam said shortly after the blast.
The explosion was timed to go off as merchants were closing shop, others were hurrying to make last-minute purchases and commuters were catching tricycle taxis home.
The local government has blamed the attack on the extremist Boko Haram movement which has been fighting for the last six years to impose Islamic law in the northeast.
It is the first such attack on Yola, which has had its population double with some 300,000 refugees fleeing the insurgent violence in the northeast that has killed some 13,000 people and forced 1.5 million from their homes.
Two hours earlier, eight soldiers were killed by a suicide car bomb a checkpoint outside a military barracks in Maiduguri, the biggest city in the northeast and the centre of the conflict some 410 kilometers (255 miles) northeast of Yola.
The Islamic extremists have stepped up attacks after a months-long lull during which a multinational force drove them from the towns where they had declared an Islamic caliphate.
More than 60 people have been killed since the weekend in Maiduguri, the birthplace of Boko Haram. Daily attacks started after President Muhammadu Buhari declared at his inauguration May 29 that he is moving the command center for the war from Abuja, the capital in central Nigeria, to Maiduguri.
Buhari was in neighboring Chad on Thursday, urging more support for the multinational force in which battle-hardened Chadian troops have played a leading role.
