Kano panics in bloody week of serial bombing

Kano State has become the gory theater of bombings, with five blasts recorded between Sunday and Monday.

Kano residents have now gone indoors, apprehensive of when the next bomb will go off.

Just one day after three explosions were recorded in three different parts the city, two more attacks have been recorded in the city.

Early Monday morning, a suicide bomber hit NNPC mega station, Hotoro Quarters, along Maiduguri Road, in the city.

Three people excluding the suicide bomber – identified as a female – died on first count.

Confirming the blast, police spokesman, Franck Mba, said the bomb went off at about 10:00am at the filling station, after a suicide bomber “suspected to be a female” slipped into the crowd of citizens buying kerosene at the station before detonating the explosives.

“The suicide bomber and three others have been confirmed dead; eight persons are injured and rushed to the hospital,” he said.

According to Mba, the mega station did not go ablaze due to the security barricade put in place by the policemen on duty at the station.

“Such a situation would have clearly complicated the emergency response,” he said.

“Security forces have cordoned off the scene, and police bomb disposal experts are ‘sweeping’ the area.”

He advised citizens to stay off the scene, to be vigilant and to report any suspicious person or activity to security forces.

He also said full-scale investigation into the blast and intensive patrol of the city had begun.

Hours after the NNPC blast, another bomb exploded at the Trade Fair Complex, Zoo road, around the Shoprite outlet in the city.

A citizen resident on Kano road said “many would have died” due to the dense population of the area. However, the Kano state police command said only a female suspect aged 18 died, while six people sustained injuries.

On July 3, 2014, TheCable had written on the growing military apprehension on the increased involvement of women in terrorism – a stark contrast from the earlier belief that women were mere Boko Haram sympathisers.

That was after a female suicide-bomber died, killed a soldier and injured another soldier after detonating an explosive during a failed attempt to force her way into the 301 Battalion in Gombe State.

There was another blast in front of Folawiyo Depot (also known as Tank farm) on Creek Road, Apapa Lagos, which killed three people and was believed to have been executed by a hijab-wearing woman.

In what was a novel move since the advent of the country’s terrorism challenge, the military on July 4 announced the arrest of three female suspected terrorists believed to be spearheading the recruitment of ladies into the female wing of Boko Haram.