A suicide bomber killed four people and wounded 48 yesterday in an attack at a bus station in Potiskum, Yobe State, police and hospital sources said.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but the town has often come under attack from Boko Haram militants.
The town has come under frequent attack by Boko Haram militants and was the scene penultimate Sunday of a bombing in a crowded market carried out by two female suicide attackers, one believed to be aged 15.
Witnesses to the latest attack said the explosion ripped through the bus station at Tashar Kunne, on the outskirts of town, at around 10:30 am (0930 GMT).
“(The bomber) slowed his car twice… some distance from the bus station? and he suddenly increased speed and rammed into buses lined up waiting for passengers,” local trader Umar Sani said.
A police officer at the scene of the latest bombing said four bodies and 48 injured people had been taken away.
The bomber “blew up his car at a bus station,” said the officer, asking not to be identified because he was not authorised to speak to the media.
A nurse at the Potiskum General Hospital gave a similar death and injury toll, and said local residents had rushed to the hospital in search of their loved ones.
She described the suicide bomber as a young man.
It would be recalled that brutal raids, massacres, suicide bomb attacks and kidnappings by Boko Haram have claimed at least 13,000 lives and driven an estimated 1.5 million people from their homes, mainly in arid North-East Nigeria.
Neighbouring Cameroon, Chad and Niger have launched a regional bid to combat the Islamists, as their attacks spread beyond Nigeria, and concern mounts over the failure of Nigerian authorities to regain control of lost territories and towns.
The Nigerian military’s moves come after the Islamists seized Baga town on the shores of Lake Chad earlier this month in what many say could be Boko Haram’s deadliest attack.
Satellite pictures released by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch last week showed widespread destruction with around 3,700 buildings in Baga and nearby Doron Baga damaged or destroyed.
Amnesty claims that as many as 2,000 civilians may have been massacred.
Although the Nigerian army authorities objected to the “sensational” claims, they however, admitted that the attack was the worse since the insurgency began, claiming that the death toll was about 150.
Meanwhile, the Nigeria Medical Association (NMA), Gombe State chapter, has called on members of the Joint Health Sector Union (JOHESU) in the state, to suspend its strike and attend to victims of recent bomb blasts in the state.
Chairman of NMA in the state, Dr. Adamu Danladi, who made the call while speaking with newsmen in Gombe yesterday, said doctors in the state had been making frantic efforts to attend to victims, but that the work was overwhelming as they were performing the jobs of almost every health worker.
According to him, members of the union have been working overnight, performing surgeries on the victims and other patients at the Specialist Hospital, Gombe.
Danladi refuted a report in one of the national dailies to the effect that victims of the blasts were not being treated at the hospital because doctors were on strike.
“All the patients in the hospital now are being attended to by the doctors as all other workers in the health sector are on strike. We are not happy for the report which said we are on strike because we are the only health workers that are performing our duties. Actually, we are overwhelmed, and we want everybody to come and assist the victims. They (victims) are our brothers and sisters, so we should come and assist,” he said.
Also commenting on the issue, Consultant Surgeon, Dr Adesina Opoola, said the victims were received and attended to by all doctors up to 2 p.m., but said they needed more hands as the work was overwhelming.