– Co-ordinated attack –
In Jos, the co-ordinator of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), Mohammed Abdulsalam, said buildings collapsed because of the intensity of the blasts in the New Abuja Market area, causing raging fires.
“More bodies may be in the debris,” he told AFP, adding: “The exact figure of the dead bodies recovered as at now is 118… 56 people were injured.”
The police in Plateau state, of which Jos is the capital, disputed the NEMA figure, however, and maintained that 46 were killed and 45 injured.
“We are saying 46,” said state police commissioner Chris Olakpe. “That’s the number we have in the morgues. But we are not ruling out more bodies.”
The military said improvised explosive devices were hidden in a truck and a minibus. The second went off about 20 minutes after the first, as emergency service workers tended to the victims.
Most of the victims were women, added Pam Ayuba, spokesman for the state governor, Jonah Jang.
Plateau, of which Jos is the capital, falls in Nigeria’s so-called Middle Belt, where the mainly Christian south meets the Muslim-majority north.
The state and its religiously divided capital have seen deadly sectarian clashes in the past as well as attacks from Boko Haram extremists, who have been waging an increasingly deadly insurgency in the north since 2009.
There was no immediate indication of who was responsible for the latest attacks, although the police in Kano said they had arrested two men in connection with Sunday’s bombing, without giving more details.
About The Author
