Suspected suicide bomber kills 12 in Nigeria’s Borno state

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria: A suspected female suicide bomber killed at least 12 people and injured several others at a fish market on Friday night in Nigeria’s northeastern Borno state, police said on Saturday.

Borno state police spokesperson Nahum Kenneth Daso said in a statement that a woman with an improvised explosive device strapped to her body, infiltrated a crowd at the fish market before detonating it among civilians.

Daso said those injured were taken to hospital.

Local residents said at least 30 people were injured.

Borno state is the heartland of an insurgency – primarily driven by the Islamist armed group Boko Haram – that has been raging for the past 16 years, killing thousands and displacing at least 2 million people, according to aid agencies.

Last Saturday, at least 100 people were killed in an attack by gunmen on a village in Nigeria’s central Benue state, Amnesty International Nigeria said.

The attack took place from late Friday into the early hours of Saturday in the village of Yelewata, the group said in a post on social media platform X.

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“Many people are still missing…dozens injured and left without adequate medical care. Many families were locked up and burnt inside their bedrooms,” the post added.

Benue is in Nigeria’s Middle Belt, a region where the majority Muslim North meets the largely Christian South.