2 Suicide Bombers Attack Checkpoint, Kill Soldier On Night Duty In Maiduguri

 By Blogger

Scene of the last suicide attack
In Maiduguri on the 31st 

Blogger (LEADERSHIP NEWSPAPER  - Aug 26, 2015) 

A soldier of the Nigeria Air Force was feared killed last night by two suspected Boko Haram suicide bombers who launched a deceptive attack on a military checkpoint in Maiduguri, the Borno state capital, security sources said. 

A young female who was said to be with the soldiers at the checkpoint was lucky to survive the attack even as she is currently being attended to by medics at a Maiduguri hospital. 

Witnesses said the attack happened at about 11pm at the military checkpoint usually mounted at night at the roundabout that leads to the airport at the entrance of Maiduguri along the Kano-Maiduguri highway. 

A Commander of the Civilian-JTF who would not want to be named in this report due to working-military rules, said the suicide bombers may have planned the attack on the soldiers and other security operatives at the Airport junction by deciding to show up near the checkpoint at that particular late hour of the night. 

Curfew hours starts at 9:30pm in Maiduguri. 

"The incident happened at about 11pm when the curfew hours began to get serious", said the Civilian-JTF Commander. 

"You know since the curfew was relaxed from 7pm to 9:30pm during the last Ramadan fasting, things were generally not as tense in the night as it used to be in the past. Though vehicle restriction is still very much in force, but pedestrian movements are often allowed especially in neighbourhoods till about midnight. 

"But last night when the soldiers on security checkpoint at the roundabout that leads to the Airport, saw two men moving from the opposite direction of the airport, they got suspicious and invited them to approach them. They asked the two men to raise up their hands – one of them complied and the other didn't. As they got closer to the soldiers, the suspected Boko Haram suicide bombers let go their explosives which killed them both and a Flight Lieutenant, instantly. 

"The soldier that was killed was sitting down on the media separator of the highway chatting with a young lady that he stopped when she was seen trekking home minutes before the blast. He was hit by a metal which killed him instantly, while the young lady sustained serious injury in her arm and is currently hospitalised".

The military is yet to issue a statement on the incident. 

But a hospital source who spoke to our reporter on phone but pleads anonymity as his superiors frown at junior medical officers speaking with the press, said "the young lady is being admitted at the accident and emergency ward, while what remains of the corpses of the two suicide bombers and that of the soldier were brought to the mortuary". 

The blast was coming as the first in Maiduguri city since 31st July when a tricycle riding suicide bomber killed at least eight early rising traders at a popular market where grocery merchants pick their fresh commodities at whole sale.