Damaturu Checkpoint Explosion: Police Recover Unexplored Bombs

*Boko Haram kills 13 in Cameroon

Police in separate operations on Wednesday recovered arms and unexploded bombs in the wreckage of a Highlander jeep at the Damaturu Checkpoint bombing site.

Yobe State Commissioner of Police, Mr Marcus Danladi, told reporters that six more unexploded bombs were discovered in the vehicle, after a thorough search by men of the Explosive Ordinance Department of the command.

Danladi explained that in Damaturu, the capital of Yobe State in Nigeria’s north-east region, four pieces of 81 mm Calibre capable of travelling 1,000 metres radius and two other improvised ones were retrieved and effectively diffused at the scene.

He stressed further that a woman in the Jeep was carrying with her, a bag containing six unexplored Mortar Bomb, which she was still holding at the scene of the blast.

According to the police boss, “the woman that was crying for help at the scene of the blast was aiming to trigger the Mortar Bomb capable of travelling 500 metres radius to claim more lives, but her mission was fruitless as she was ignored by the officers and men on ground having known her mission”.

Danladi added that the woman later died at the scene as a result of the injuries sustained in the blast, confirming that the Mortar Bomb in her custody were recovered and successfully diffused.

He also said that men of the command on patrol at Bara in Gulani Local Government Area of Yobe State recently engaged the Boko Haram militants and liberated an evaded Village Market from possible attack.

Items recovered in the operation included a General Purpose Machine Gun (GPMG), Tow AK 47 rifles with 2 AK 47 loaded magazine, 60 rounds of ammunition, an Improvised Explosive Device and 500 units of GPMG life ammunition.

On Monday, terrorists on suicide mission detonated explosive devices at a checkpoint in Damaturu in the course of their arrest by the police, killing eight people.

Meanwhile, two suicide bomb attacks killed at least 13 people in northern Cameroon on Wednesday, the president’s office said, in what appeared to be the deepest incursion by Boko Haram militants from neighbouring Nigeria.

The first explosion hit a market and the second a densely populated neighbourhood, both in the capital of Cameroon’s Far North region, Maroua, a military source told Reuters.

No one claimed responsibility, but Boko Haram has stepped up attacks on the countries bordering its northeast Nigerian stronghold – Chad, Niger as well as Cameroon.

All three have contributed troops to a regional offensive against the Islamist militants who have allied themselves to Islamic State and pose one of the biggest security threats in the combustible region.

“People were running in all directions,” said Celestin, a teacher, who said he had just arrived at the city’s central market when the first bomb went off.

A statement from the office of President Paul Biya said 13 people were killed in the attack. Cameroon state television channel CRTV quoted the region’s governor saying 17 people died.

The blasts came 10 days after two suicide attacks killed 13 people in Fotokol, about 300 km (200 miles) north of Maroua.

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