A bomb exploded in a teahouse in a village in northeast Nigeria, killing 19 people and wounding two dozen more in the second major attack in a few weeks, security sources said on Thursday.
The Wednesday night blast in Kawuri village in Borno State was one of the deadliest in recent years in northeast Nigeria, where violence from a grinding jihadist conflict has been on the decline.
“There was an explosion at a tea joint in Kawuri around 8:00 pm yesterday. We have recovered 19 dead bodies and 27 injured,” Ibrahim Liman, a member of an anti-jihadist militia that works with the army, told AFP.
Two other militiamen confirmed the toll in Kawuri, around 50 kilometers (31 miles) from the state capital Maiduguri.
The attack came just weeks after multiple suicide attackers killed 32 people in Borno State’s Gwoza area when they targeted a wedding, a hospital, and a funeral.
No group has claimed responsibility for Wednesday’s blast or the Gwoza attacks, but the Boko Haram jihadist group and their rivals Islamic State West Africa Province are both active in Borno.
Large bomb attacks in towns have become rare since the army pushed militants back from territory they controlled at the height of the conflict in 2014, though they still carry out assaults and ambushes in rural areas.
Tackling insecurity was one of the priorities for President Bola Ahmed Tinubu when he came to office more than a year ago. Nigeria’s armed forces are also fighting heavily armed gangs in the country’s northwest.
