A suspected car bomb exploded Sunday morning near a church Living Faith church in a neighborhood of Bauchi, the capital of Bauchi state. An initial report from the Nigerian Red Cross in Bauchi said at least 33 people had been wounded and taken to local hospitals.
Police and soldiers cordoned off the area, blocking emergency workers from immediately accessing the site, said Mohammed Garba, an official with the Bauchi State Emergency Management Agency. Red Cross officials said they suspected others were killed by the blast, but could not enter the church’s compound to collect the corpses.
Garba said officials suspected the blast came from a car bomb. Witnesses also said they thought a bomb had exploded from inside a car near the church.
A spokesman for Nigeria’s Federal Emergency Management Agency confirmed the explosion, but gave no details. Police officials could not be immediately reached for comment.
Eyewitnesses reported seeing injured people being ferried to the hospital.
The blast comes as Nigeria faces a growing wave of sectarian violence carried out by a radical Islamist sect known as Boko Haram. Boko Haram, whose name means “Western education is sacrilege” in the Hausa language of Nigeria’s Muslim north, has been blamed for killing more than 530 people this year alone, according to an AP count.
The sect’s targets have included churches, often attacked by suicide car bombers.
The latest attack comes after a lull in violent activities of the sect, which has spooked observers in recent days who feared that another attack might be in the offing from a sect who obviously enjoy the publity that come with their deadly activities.