Two girls was killed and three customs officers seriously wounded in a fresh blast on Monday in troubled northern city of Maiduguri, an army general said.
"Three customs officers were seriously injured in the attack while two child vendors -- both of them girls -- were killed in the blast," the commander of the city's joint task force, general Jack Okechukwu Nwobo, told.
Residents and witnesses put the death toll at about a dozen, however.
"I was about 100 metres (yards) from the customs bridge roundabout when the blast happened. It was a crowded area. I saw two vans conveying the dead. From my estimation, not less than 10 people were killed in the blast," a resident near the scene, Sheu Abdulkadir, told AFP.
A local journalist said he saw several dead bodies on the ground after the blast.
"I escaped death by the whiskers. I had just negotiated the roundabout when the blast happened. I saw many lifeless bodies on the ground. I counted at least 12," said the journalist, who declined to be named.
The exact nature of the blast was not immediately known.
Security agents had cordoned off the site of the blast.
No comments:
Post a Comment