Nigerian bus station bombing kills 20 in northeastern city
At least 20 people were killed in a bombing at a bus station in Nigeria’s northeastern city of Gombe, Bloomberg reported, citing the Red Cross and witnesses.
Explosives went off in a car at the Dukku motor park in the city at about 11 a.m. today, Abubakar Yakubu Gombe, the Red Cross secretary for Gombe state, said by phone today, confirming the death toll. The injured were taken to the nearby Gombe Medical Center and Gombe Teaching Hospital, he said.
“At the scene of the blast I saw about 20 bodies lying on ground and we have helped take them into a bus to the hospital,” Abubakar Shehu, a resident in Gombe, said by phone from the city. “We also helped to evacuate the injured ones, I counted 17 of them.”
While no one claimed the attack, authorities in Africa’s most populous nation of more than 170 million are struggling to contain a five-year insurgency by Islamist militant group Boko Haram, which has killed more than 13,000 people, according to the government.
The attack follows another bus station bombing in Gombe on Oct. 31, which killed at least eight and injured 46.
Gombe state police spokesman Fwaji Atajiri confirmed the bombing, though declined to give casualty numbers until after an investigation, he said by phone.