Bomb attack on packed market kills 50 in Nigeria

The attack reportedly took the lives of more than 40 people and injured dozens more in a crowded market in the town of Sabon Gari.

“It was concealed in a knapsack used for spraying herbicides”. It was smuggled into the market and apparently abandoned…

President Deby was addressing reporters in N’Djamena on the 55th anniversary celebration of Chad’s independence from France when he declared that Boko Haram has been “decapitated”.

Rumours have also been circulating in recent months that Shekau has gone on the run or even fled Nigeria as a result of increased military operations against Boko Haram by both the Nigerian and Chadian governments.

The U.S. “strongly condemns” the attack on the market and believes “the eople of northern Nigeria deserve to live free from violence and from terror”, State Department spokesman John Kirby said in a statement.

A regional offensive launched earlier this year has driven Boko Haram from numerous towns it had occupied, but the militants have still been able to launch attacks, including suicide bombings. Two days before that, jihadists shot dead four people and abducted five more in the same area.

In the latest attack blamed on Boko Haram, some 47 people were killed when a bomb exploded at a busy market in the restive Borno state.

An explosion in Borno, Nigeria killed at least 47 people on Tuesday, according to the BBC. There are little groups (of Boko Haram members) scattered throughout east Nigeria, on the border with Cameroon. Deby’s forces have been fighting Boko Haram militants on the country’s border with Nigeria.

On the genesis of the Boko Haram crisis, Ibrahim said: “It all started, we were told, in Egypt during the reign of Gammal Abdel Naseer, who died in 1970”.

“We have to take this with extreme caution, especially against the background of the phantom negotiations we had previous year spearheaded by Chad”, said Freedom Onuoha, a research fellow at the National Defence College in the Nigerian capital of Abuja.