Abuja - A suicide bomber killed 11 people
on Wednesday in an attack on a mosque in northeast Nigeria, the
epicentre of the conflict with Islamist insurgency Boko Haram,
military officials and an aid worker said.
The bomber hit the mosque in the town of Gamboru in Borno
state, near Nigeria's border with Cameroon, during dawn prayers,
said Ali Mustapha, an aid worker.
"I was on my way to dawn prayer, then I heard the sound of a
loud bomb explosion inside the mosque," Mustapha told Reuters.
"The mosque was destroyed and burnt," he said. "After some
hours, when we came to evacuation of the people, we saw 11
corpses, with the suicide bomber making (the total number of
dead) 12."
Pictures of the aftermath of the blast showed the bodies of
the dead uncovered and lined up on the ground. A building had
been reduced to rubble, with only a few sections of wall left
standing.
Nobody claimed responsibility for the attack, but it bears
the hallmarks of Boko Haram, a jihadist group which frequently
uses suicide bombers, often women and girls, to attack crowded
public spaces such as mosques and markets.
Despite repeated government and military assertions that the
insurgency has been defeated, Boko Haram continues to carry out
lethal attacks on the military and civilians.
Last week four civilians were killed in an attack by
suspected Boko Haram militants on Maiduguri, the Nigerian city
at the centre of the conflict with the Islamists.
In November a suicide bomber killed at least 50 people in an
attack on a mosque, in one of the deadliest bombings of recent
years.