Suicide bombers target fuel tankers

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (AP) — Three suicide bombers set ablaze three fuel tankers in the centre of Nigeria’s northeastern city of Maiduguri before dawn Friday, officials said, just days before a planned visit by the UN Security Council.

Soldiers fired at one of the bombers, a teenage girl, to avert what could have been a major attack on the city’s main fuel depot, according to the police chief and a witness.

“We are lucky. Today could have been another sad day for us in Maiduguri,” police commissioner Damian Chukwu told reporters at the scene, where firefighters were dousing several fires.

The attack, outside a gas station opposite the northeastern headquarters of the Central Bank of Nigeria, killed only the three bombers, said Abdulkadir Ibrahim, spokesman for the National Emergency Management Agency.

Officials blamed Boko Haram insurgents who many times have attacked Maiduguri, the birthplace of Nigeria’s homegrown Islamic extremist group.

An elderly female bomber blew herself up beside a stationary tanker loaded with fuel around 3 a.m., witness Mala Gajibo told The Associated Press.

She was accompanied by a teenage boy and girl who continued down the road toward the fuel depot until they were challenged by soldiers, Gajibo said. Chukwu also said soldiers fired at one of the bombers.

“They ordered them to stop but they chose to run,” Gajibo said. “The male suicide bomber detonated his explosives near S. Baba (gas) filling station, while the girl was shot at by the military and ran under a parked truck loaded with petrol products which went up in flames” when her explosives detonated.