Suicide bomber’s attack in Damaturu checkpoint kills eight

Posted by admin Armed Forces, Headlines, State News, Yobe Monday, August 6th, 2012

A suicide car bomber on Sunday attacked a military
checkpoint in Nigeria’s northeastern city of Damaturu,
killing six soldiers and two civilians, police said.

Suspicion will fall on Islamist sect Boko Haram, which is
waging an insurgency against President Goodluck
Jonathan’s government across the north with the aim
of carving out an Islamic state in a country split evenly
between Christians and Muslims.

“The lone suicide bomber detonated the bomb before
the car he was in could be stopped, killing the six
soldiers and one civilian,” Patrick Egbmuniwe, the
police commissioner for Yobe State, told Reuters by
telephone.

“Another civilian died of his wounds in hospital shortly
after.”

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the
attack in Damaturu’s Shagari housing estate.
Labelled a foreign terrorist organisation by the United
States, Boko Haram has been behind almost daily
shootings and bombings in the volatile northeast.

Witness Abdullahi Sabo said the whole neighbourhood
shook when the Damaturu bomb exploded.

“The car blew up outside the front of my shop, the
explosion was deadly,” he said. “After the dust settled,
many security operatives were rushed to the hospital.”

In a separate incident, police said suspected sect
members had shot dead a former commissioner for the
environment in neighbouring Borno state, the
epicentre of the Boko Haram insurgency, in the early
hours of Saturday.
Reuterswp_posts