Nigerian police said on Thursday that they believed a suicide bomber was responsible for the explosion that killed multiple worshippers at a mosque on Christmas eve in the northeastern province of Borno.
Five people have died and 35 have been injured, according to a police spokesperson. Eight people were killed, a witness told AFP on Wednesday.
According to witnesses and the police, the device went off inside the packed Al-Adum Juma’at Mosque at Gamboru market in the capital city of Maiduguri as Muslims gathered for evening prayers at around 6:00 p.m. (1700 GMT).
“An unknown individual, whom we suspect to be a member of a terrorist group, entered inside the mosque, and while prayer was ongoing, we recorded an explosion,” police spokesman Nahum Daso told journalists.
The “incident may have been a suicide bombing, based on the recovery of fragments of a suspected suicide vest and witness statements,” according to a statement released by Daso late on Wednesday.
Following the explosion, police officers have been sent to marketplaces, houses of worship, and other public areas.
Since 2009, Nigeria has been fighting a jihadist insurgency led by Boko Haram and its offshoot, Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP). According to the UN, this conflict has resulted in at least 40,000 deaths and the displacement of about two million people from their homes in the northeast.
Jihadist attacks have been documented in different areas of the West African country, despite the fact that the combat has mostly been restricted to the northeast.
The city of Maiduguri, which was formerly the site of nightly gunfights and explosions, has been quiet lately; the most recent significant attack was reported in 2021.
