By Kevwe Ebireri
Two unidentified female suicide bombers have blown themselves and many others up Monday morning at a market in Maiduguri, Borno State.
This comes barely five days after two female suicide bombers struck at a crowded market in the state capital killing at least 30 persons.
Eyewitnesses say the explosion went off just as a Joint Task Force personnel proceeded to conduct a search on the ladies, causing traders and shoppers to scamper for safety.
The Borno State Police Public Relations Officer, Gideon Jubrin, who confirmed the incident to newsmen, said it was too early to make casualty assessment.
“We all heard the explosions in town, but it will be too early now to say what actually happened and what damage was caused by the explosion until much later,” said Jubrin.
A trader, Bala Dauda, who spoke with the AP on phone said security agents and aid workers are evacuating the dead and injured persons from the scene of the explosion.
Although Dauda too could not put a figure to the number of casualties, he said “I have seen very many victims dripping with blood, others with parts of their bodies dismembered by the blasts.”
In recent times, the Boko Haram insurgents have used young teenage girls as weapons to unleash terror in the various parts of the North east, especially in Adamawa, Borno and Yobe States.
The first known case of a female bomber was that of a middle-aged woman who rode on a motorcycle to a military barracks in the north eastern city of Gombe, where she detonated explosives while being searched at a checkpoint, killing a soldier in the process.
The initial thinking of the military was that the ladies were among the over 200 school girls kidnapped by the Boko Haram insurgents who had been “brainwashed” to the Boko Haram cause, but there is no hard evidence to prove that yet.
Defence spokesperson, Chris Olukolade, a major general, said that the Boko Haram insurgents strategically use female suicide bombers as it is easier to penetrate targets because security agents are often less suspicious about women.