Security guards shot and killed a man trying to detonate a bomb at a camp in north-eastern Nigeria for people displaced during a seven-year insurgency waged by Islamist militant group Boko Haram.
PR Nigeria, a state-approved agency, said the incident occurred at a place where refugees are screened before entering the camp in the Muna Garage district of the city of Maiduguri.
Ibrahim Abdulkadir, a spokesman for the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), confirmed the suicide bomber had been killed.
The attempted suicide bombing came a day after multiple blasts rocked Maiduguri, the birthplace of the jihadist insurgency in Nigeria, killing two people and four suicide bombers.
Nobody has claimed responsibility for the attacks on Friday and Saturday but they bore the hallmarks of Boko Haram. The group targets crowded areas — such as markets, places of worship and refugee camps — in suicide bomb attacks across north-east Nigeria and in neighbouring Cameroon and Niger.
Boko Haram has killed some 15,000 people and forced more than two million people to flee their homes during the group’s attempt to create a state in north-eastern Nigeria that adheres to strict Islamic laws.
Nigeria’s army has pushed the militant group back to its stronghold in the Sambisa forest in the last few months and bombings have decreased in frequency.
However, last month a car bomb killed eight people in Maiduguri and two suicide bombers killed a further eight in the city. Raids by gunmen on remote north-eastern villages have also been reported in the last few weeks.
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