Members of the Boko Haram Islamic sect on Sunday
bombed a bar and a brothel located near a major military base in Mubi, Adamawa
State and killed over 60 people.
Sources told saharareporters that
explosion rocked the popularly bar located at Kaban, a few kilometres to the
headquarters of the Special Operations Battalion (SOB) of the Nigerian army in
Mubi.
It was gathered that the SOB was at the centre of
the Nigerian government’s counter-offensive against Boko Haram’s increasingly
daring attacks on military and civilian targets.
Saharareporters reported that the blast
occurred around 6pm at the brothel where both military and civilians used to
unwind.
The agency reported that one of its sources said
none of the casualties was a soldier, but another source told saharareporters
that it was too early to determine whether soldiers were among the casualties
or not.
Saharareporters added that soldiers
based in Mubi “frequently join civilians to eat, drink and dance at the
watering hole. It, however, added that military commanders had warned soldiers
not to stay at the joint past 4 p.m.
In recent weeks, Boko Haram has carried out
deadly attacks in the northeast Nigerian states of Adamawa, Borno and Yobe
despite the Federal Government’s declaration of a state of emergency in the
three states.
Meanwhile, security forces in Cameroon have
killed about 40 Boko Haram militants in clashes in the country’s far north on
Sunday.
Cameroon’s state radio said this on Sunday
shortly after the release of two Italian priests and a Canadian nun suspected
to have been held by the Islamist group.
A government source in Yaounde was
quoted by Reuters as having confirmed the clashes which took place
west of the town of Kousseri, in the region bordering Nigeria and Chad.
Cameroon, which had been criticised by Nigeria
for not doing enough to fight the Boko Haram insurgents, deployed some 1,000
troops in the far North last week.
The two Italian priests and a Canadian nun
kidnapped in northern Cameroon nearly two months ago by suspected Boko Haram
gunmen were released on Sunday, smiling and apparently in good health as they
arrived in Yaounde, the capital.
Reuters reported that Giampaolo Marta
and Gianantonio Allegri, missionaries from the diocese of Vicenza in northeast
Italy, and Canadian Gilberte Bissiere were seized on the night of April 4 from
the parish of Maroua, close to the border with Nigeria.
There has been no claim of responsibility for
their kidnapping but Cameroonian officials have pointed the finger at the
Nigerian Islamist group Boko Haram, which has become active in a region that it
had for some time used as a logistical base.
Reuters added that state television in
Cameroon showed images of the priests and the nun arriving at Yaounde airport
on Sunday in the company of heavily armed Cameroonian special forces.
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