ABUJA, Nigeria — A suicide bomber detonated explosives inside a busy restaurant in Konduga, Borno State, late Friday, killing at least 10 people and injuring several others, police said Saturday.
Police spokesperson Nahum Daso told The Associated Press that the blast ripped through the eatery in the town, located about 30 kilometers from the state capital Maiduguri, during a heavy downpour, which helped the attacker slip past security unnoticed. “We are still accounting for the dead and injured,” Daso said, adding that investigations are ongoing.
Residents said the bomber, believed to be female, blended into the crowd before triggering the device. “The rain was so heavy that people were huddled under awnings,” said Ismail Ahmed, a Konduga resident. “She just walked in and set off the bomb”.
Those wounded were rushed to a nearby hospital, where medical staff treated victims for shrapnel wounds and blast trauma. Authorities have yet to release exact figures on the injured but described their conditions as “serious” in several cases.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but the hallmarks of the assault mirror tactics used by Boko Haram and its splinter faction, the Islamic State West Africa Province, which have waged a bloody insurgency in Nigeria’s northeast since 2009. The decade-and-a-half conflict has claimed some 35,000 civilian lives and displaced over two million people, according to the United Nations.
Despite pledges by President Bola Tinubu’s administration to strengthen security in the region, extremist violence persists, underscoring the challenges facing authorities in protecting civilians and restoring stability in Borno State.
