Two female suicide bombers kill four in Potiskum

Two explosions ripped through a crowded mobile
phone market in the northeast
Nigerian city of
Potiskum on Sunday, residents said, a day after a
car exploded outside a police station, killing at
least two.
The blasts rocked the Kasuwar Jagwal market
within seconds of each other at about 3:10 pm
(1410 GMT) when business was at its peak but
there were no immediate indications of the
number of casualties.
“The first explosion happened inside the market
and the second went off just outside the entrance
as people rushed out to flee,” said witness
Ibrahim Dambam.
It was not clear whether the blasts were caused
by suicide attacks or explosives left in the
market, where new and second-hand phones are
sold and repaired.
Sunday is Potiskum’s market day and attracts
traders and shoppers from all over Yobe State
and beyond.
Another witness, Badaru Isa, said security
operatives had taken over the site, which had
been deserted.

“No-one can say how many people were affected
by the blasts because everybody fled the area
following the explosions,” he added.
Panicked shoppers fled and traders abandoned
their stalls at both the mobile phone market and
the city’s main market, which is just next door.
On Saturday, a car exploded outside a nearby
police station in the city, killing the driver and a
policeman. The vehicle was being escorted to the
facility after being stopped earlier at a checkpoint.
Hours before that incident, at least 19 people
were killed when a female suicide bomber,
thought to be aged just 10, exploded outside a
market in Maiduguri, the state capital of
neighbouring Borno.
Boko Haram were suspected of instigating the
Maiduguri attack, as it has increasingly used
female suicide bombers in its violent campaign for
a hardline Islamic state in northeast Nigeria.
Car bombings and explosions caused by devices
left in crowded places have also been hallmarks
of its bloody, six-year insurgency.
In November last year, a female suicide bomber
killed 12 people in an attack on another mobile
phone market in the town of Azare, in nearby
Bauchi state.
Potiskum, the commercial capital of Yobe, has
seen a spate of attacks by the Sunni Islam
radicals, including one against a Shia procession
last November which killed 15.
A week after that attack, at least 58 people were
killed when a suicide bomber blew himself up a
city secondary school.