News / Nigeria

Security guard killed in terrorist attack in northeast Nigeria

Saturday, 13 May 2017 2:59 PM [ Last Update: Saturday, 13 May 2017 3:06 PM ]

The file photo shows the entrance of University of Maiduguri, Maiduguri, Nigeria, where a security guard was killed on May 13, 2017 after two attackers blew themselves up.

A security guard was killed after two attackers blew themselves up in Maiduguri, a city in northeastern Nigeria that has regularly been targeted by Boko Haram Takfiri terrorists, officials said.

About an hour after midnight (0000 GMT) three "bombers, two men and a woman, tried to enter the University of Maiduguri, but were spotted by university security who stopped them for questioning," the country's NEMA emergency management agency said in a statement.

"During questioning, the two men detonated their explosives, killing one of the guards and wounding another," an agency spokesman, Abdulkadir Ibrahim, said in the statement.

The third bomber managed to hide near a church on the campus and detonated her device damaging the structure but leaving no victims, he said.

A security source also confirmed that a security guard had been killed and told AFP that the wounded guard was a Nigerian army soldier.

Boko Haram terrorists have increasingly resorted to bomb attacks against civilians and security positions, as the group has been weakened by a sustained military counter-insurgency. Civilians have been worst affected by the eight-year conflict, which has killed at least 20,000 in Nigeria alone and made more than 2.6 million others homeless.

This month, 82 of the more than 200 Nigerian schoolgirls who were kidnapped by Boko Haram in 2014 were released after negotiations with the government, but 113 are still being held.

Late on Friday, Boko Haram released a video claiming to show the Chibok schoolgirls who refused to be rescued as part of the swap deal. In the three-minute video, a woman who claims to be Maida Yakubu is seen wearing a black veil and holding a gun. Flanked by three other women clad in black, she proclaims her loyalty to Boko Haram and says she does not want to return to her parents "in the town of unbelief."

(Source: AFP)

Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:

www.presstv.co.uk