Nigeria police suspect suicide bomber behind mosque attack in Borno state

Nigeria police said on Thursday that they suspected a suicide bomber was behind the blast that killed several worshippers in a mosque on Wednesday in the country's northeastern Borno state.

A police spokesperson put the death toll at five, with 35 wounded. A witness on Wednesday told AFP that eight people were killed.

The bomb went off inside the crowded Al-Adum Juma'at Mosque at Gamboru market in the capital city of Maiduguri, as Muslim faithful gathered for evening prayers around 6:00 pm (17:00 GMT), according to witnesses and the police.

"An unknown individual, whom we suspect to be a member of a terrorist group, entered inside the mosque, and while prayer was ongoing, we recorded an explosion," police spokesperson Nahum Daso told journalists.

Suicide vest

Daso said in a statement late on Wednesday that the "incident may have been a suicide bombing, based on the recovery of fragments of a suspected suicide vest and witness statements."

Maiduguri has been calm in recent years, with the last major attack recorded in 2021.