2 Suicide Bombers Attack Checkpoint, Kill NAF Officer In Maiduguri

An officer of the Nigerian Air Force was feared killed last night by two suspected Boko Haram suicide bombers who launched an attack on a military checkpoint in Maiduguri, the Borno State capital.

According to security sources, a young girl who was 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 did not want to be named, said the suicide bombers really planned the attack on the soldiers and other security operatives at the Airport Junction by deciding to show up near the checkpoint at that late hour of the night.

Curfew 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 they used to be. Though vehicular 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 their hands, and one of them complied but the other didn’t. As they got closer to the soldiers, the suspected Boko Haram suicide bombers detonated 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 injuries 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 on condition of 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 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.