ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) — A bomb exploded in a roadside market in Nigeria’s Borno state killing at least 16 people and wounding dozens of others, police said. The government imposed a 24-hour curfew after the bombing attack, the second in recent weeks.
The attack happened at about 8 p.m. local time Wednesday at a teashop that hosts mostlylocals in Kawori, a rural community in the Konduga area, some 50 kilometers (31 miles) from the state capital Maiduguri, according to local media reports.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack but analysts and some local officials suspected the Islamic militant group Boko Haram, which has since 2009 waged an insurgency in Nigeria and neighboring countries in the Lake Chad region.
“This latest bomb explosion targeting civilians is a stark reminder of the continued threat posed by Boko Haram, especially as it is coming after a triple suicide attack” in Gwoza in the southern part of the state, said Malik Samuel, a researcher on the Lake Chad conflict at the Institute for Security Studies.
Local police said the bomb used in Kawori was an improvised explosive device that was planted in the cafe, not a suicide attack. The police said 16 people were killed but did not give a definitive number of other victims who they said were “critically injured” and undergoing treatment in hospitals around the state. The state emergency management agency said about 24 people were seriously injured.
Following the attack, young people in the state capital Maiduguri poured onto the streets to join the nationwide protests against Nigeria’s worsening cost-of-living crisis, and the police fired tear-gas to disperse them. A spokesperson for the police, Nahum Kenneth Daso, said a 24-hour curfew imposed by the state government was “expedient” to restore order.
The insurgency by Boko Haram and its splinter group the Islamic State West Africa Province has created a humanitarian disaster in Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger and Chad, with more than 35,000 people killed and 2.6 million others displaced over the last 15 years.
The groups want to install an Islamic state across the four countries but mainly in Nigeria, West Africa’s oil giant of more than 200 million people divided almost equally between a mainly Christian south and a predominantly Muslim north.
The Nigerian government has claimed progress against the insurgency, but Boko Haram and ISWAP continue to attack civilians and have expanded into other regions, including central Nigeria where the capital Abuja is located, according to experts and public records on counterterrorism.
“Hardly does a day pass without a Boko Haram incident against civilians, particularly in Borno State, but they go unreported because of lack of access to many areas,” Samuel said.
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Associated Press writer Haruna Umar in Maiduguri contributed to this report.