From Timothy Olanrewaju, Maiduguri and Oladele Oguntimehin
TWO female bombers who pretended to be refugees blew themselves up at an Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camp in Borno’s border town of Banki and killed seven people.
A security source and youth vigilante member of Civilian JTF told Daily Sun that the two female bombers sneaked into the IDPs camp at Banki, a liberated town on the Nigeria-Cameroon border some 126 kilometres to Maiduguri, Borno’s capital.
“People thought they were IDPs until the first explosion occurred. The second one followed minutes later. Seven people died,” a CJTF member who came to Maiduguri from Konduga, some 45 kilometres away, said. The source said some of his colleagues in Bama gave him information about the attack.
There were conflicting figures about the number of injured.
Some sources said about 10 people were injured while others put the figure at 12. The military is yet to speak on the incident.
The attack, which occurred on Wednesday morning, was not known at the capital until yesterday due to breakdown of telephone services in the area.
Banki, a commercially thriving town was attacked twice by Boko Haram in 2013 and early 2014.
The insurgents were later cleared from the area by the military in April 2015.
Meanwhile, a senior Nigeria Customs Service official, who asked not to be named, said eight people were killed but put the number of wounded at 15. Nevertheless, there has been no claim of responsibility for the attack.