One bomb exploded at a restaurant filled with Muslims breaking the Ramadan fast, resident Saminu Attahiru said by phone on Monday. That was followed by gunfire and another blast at a mosque, said Tijjani Saifullahi, who survived the assault.
The Jos attacks, the first major incidents in that city since February, were the worst in a weekend of violence in Nigeria, which is fighting a six-year-old rebellion by the Islamist militant group Boko Haram.
A suicide bombing on the same day in a church in Potiskum in Yobe state killed five people, police said. The weekend bloodshed came after days of bomb and gun raids that claimed the lives of about 150 people, marking the deadliest period since President Muhammadu Buhari was sworn in on May 29.
Buhari “wholly condemns the resumption of attacks by terrorists on places of worship,” his spokesperson Femi Adesina said in a statement late on Sunday. The government is committed “to doing everything possible to eradicate Boko Haram, terrorism and mindless extremism from Nigeria in the shortest possible time,” Adesina said.
Heavy losses
The UK and US have condemned the recent flare-up of killings by Boko Haram, which earlier this year sustained heavy losses as a result of a cross-border military campaign involving Nigeria and its neighbors Chad and Niger.
“These attacks serve as a stark reminder of the threat posed by Boko Haram, which deliberately targets the weak and vulnerable and those, both Muslim and Christian, who will not subscribe to their extremist and intolerant views,” UK Minister for Africa, James Duddridge, said in a statement on Saturday.
At least 1.4-million people had been forced to flee their homes by fighting in Borno, Yobe, Adamawa, Gombe, and Taraba states as of June, according to data from the International Organisation for Migration working with Nigeria’s National Emergency Management Agency, Sani Datti, a NEMA spokesperson, said in a statement on Sunday. – Bloomberg