Unknown gunmen shot dead a traffic warden earlier on Monday in Nigeria’s restive northern city of Maiduguri followed by loud explosion and gun firing which shaken the city in the evening.
Report says more than a dozen loud explosions were heard in the Gomari-Costain district of the city and the Gomari primary school near telecommunications pole was set on fire as well. After the attacks, the Authorities had deployed troops and reinforced tanks on the streets of the city as residents, traders and motorists quickly left the deserted streets and locked themselves in their homes. The soldiers sealed off nearly every street in the city centre as the attacks began on Monday afternoon and continued after dark.
Residents and military of the city say that, later in the day when gunmen fired and killed a traffic warden, the military Joint Task Force did not respond to telephone calls on the situation in the city. According to report on Sunday the Maiduguri, capital of north-eastern Borno state, was shaken by a roadside explosion and two separate gun attacks that killed at least four people including a local chief. Earlier this month, soldiers in Maiduguri supposedly opened fire on a busy street after a bomb attack killed an army officer. Witnesses said military shot dead up to 30 civilians after a bomb attack on an army patrol in Maiduguri.
The city of Maiduguri is said to be a stronghold of Islamist group Boko Haram but no immediate reports of casualties or who was behind the explosions and gunfire which created panic in the city have been given. Boko Haram has repeatedly attacked Christians attending Sunday worship across northern Nigeria. The division has said it wants to create an Islamic state in the mainly Muslim north of Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, where most people in the south are Christian. The group is blamed for killing more than 1 400 people in Nigeria since 2010.
