Bomb blast kills 14 in Azare

One witness said the explosions in the second biggest town in Bauchi State, occurred around 9 am as people, many of them from Potiskum in Yobe State, queued at the ATM to make cash withdrawals. The two Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) were planted by suspected Boko Haram insurgents.Minority leader of the Bauchi State House of […]

One witness said the explosions in the second biggest town in Bauchi State, occurred around 9 am as people, many of them from Potiskum in Yobe State, queued at the ATM to make cash withdrawals. The two Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) were planted by suspected Boko Haram insurgents.
Minority leader of the Bauchi State House of Assembly, Baba Abubakar Suleiman, who participated in the funeral Prayer, told newsmen that 37 people affected by the blasts, 14 of who died.
Suleiman said after verification: “37 people were affected by the blast out of which 14 died, two of them are females and there are unidentified bodies; 16 injured are on admission at the Federal Medical Centre, one injured person was referred to the Aminu Kano University Teaching Hospital, while six people were treated and discharged, this is the correct and authentic number of the casualties.”
There were initially conflicting casualty figures as some people said there 16 were dead and 20 critically would, while hospital sources stated only eight people died and 13 were wounded.
The minority leader described incident as devastating and appealed to security agencies to be up and doing apart from routine checks in order to protect lives and property, recalling that only two months ago a similar attack was carried out at the Azare motor park.
A top security source told Weekly Trust that most of the victims came from Potiskum in Yobe State. “The incident was a fallout of the Potiskum incident because the eye witness account to the security said someone came with the IED and when people suspected that he had something hidden they tried to chase him but he ignited it, it was the sharp nails of the blast that killed the people,” the security source explained.
Hundreds of workers from Potiskum in Yobe State, Katagum, Shira and Giade local government areas of Bauchi State were expected to collect their salaries through the ATM machine in Azare because all the banks in Potiskum, Shira and Giade were burnt down by Boko Haram insurgents.
“There are only three ATM in three banks that are working in the whole of Azare so many customers usually gather there,” a source that asked for anonymity told Weekly Trust.
The incident is coming exactly two weeks after another bomb exploded at a busy motor park in Azare killing eight people. It was learnt that two men walked up to the ATM and pretended to want to withdraw money and shortly after dropped two IEDs and hurriedly left the scene.
“As one exploded killing many people at the ATM, another one exploded as people were running to the scene,” one witness said. Leading the funeral prayers, the chief imam of Azare, Malam Ayuba, pray for the repose of the souls of the victims and also asked Allah to grant them eternal rest, forgive their sins and bring an end to the calamities in the country.
The 14 victims were buried in Azare cemetery yesterday after Islamic rites at the town’s central mosque.