KANO, Nigeria (Reuters) – Two female suicide bombers blew themselves up at a trade show and a petrol station in northern Nigeria’s biggest city of Kano yesterday, killing one other person and injuring at least six others, police and a military source said.
“A show was going on at the trade fair complex. A young lady wearing a veil came and sought to enter. At the point when she was being searched by security at the gate, she detonated an explosion, which killed her and injured six others,” Kano police command spokesman Magaji Majiya said.
The other suicide bomber at the petrol station killed herself and another person, the military source said, without giving further details of that blast.
They were the latest bomb attacks to hit Kano, the commercial hub of mainly Muslim northern Nigeria, in 24 hours.
On Sunday, a bomber hurled explosives at worshippers in a Catholic church, killing five and wounding eight. Also on Sunday, a female suicide bomber killed herself while trying to target police officers. Nobody else died in that attack.
There have been no claims of responsibility for any of the blasts, but the prime suspect is likely to be the Islamist militant group Boko Haram, which is fighting for an Islamic state in religiously-mixed Nigeria.
The militants have killed thousands since launching an uprising in 2009 and are seen as the gravest security threat to Africa’s biggest economy and top oil producer.
Though much of the violence is concentrated in the remote northeast, they have struck across Nigeria in several bomb attacks since April.
On Sunday, they mounted a cross-border attack into Cameroon, killing at least three people there and kidnapping the wife of the vice prime minister.
