Military officers walk past the remains of a car after an explosion on July 23, 2014 in Kaduna, Nigeria/AFP
Police blamed the first explosion on a suicide bomber targeting the convoy of a prominent cleric who has publicly criticised the Islamic extremists waging a deadly five-year uprising.
Sheikh Dahiru Bauchi was travelling in an open-roofed truck greeting well-wishers who had assembled on the roadside when the bomb went off at roughly 12:30pm (1130 GMT), Kaduna police chief Umar Shehu said.
“Twenty-five people have so far been confirmed dead,” he told AFP.
Bauchi, who had just presided over a major Koranic conference, escaped unhurt but his convoy was splattered with the blood and flesh of the bomber and his victims, according to witness Mustapha Sani.
There was no immediate confirmation of Boko Haram’s involvement in the attack on the Isa Kaita road near the city centre.
But the Islamists, who have killed more than 2,000 civilians already this year, have accused senior clerics like Bauchi of betraying the faith by submitting to the authority of a secular government, currently led by a devout Christian, President Goodluck Jonathan.
Roughly two hours later a second blast rocked the crowded Kawo area on the outskirts of Kaduna, a commuter hub full of bus stations that also hosts a military post.
While police were not yet ready to describe the second explosion as a bombing, witnesses at the site who spoke to AFP anonymously said it too was deliberate.
Rescue workers were racing to the chaotic scene, just a few kilometres from where the cleric’s convoy was attacked, witnesses said.
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