LAGOS: Five people have been killed in Nigeria's northeastern Maiduguri after a bomb exploded during prayer at a mosque on Wednesday night, a police statement said.
Police added that 35 people were injured in the attack, which it said is likely a suicide attack.
“Preliminary investigations further suggest that the incident may have been a suicide bombing, based on the recovery of fragments of a suspected suicide vest and witness statements recorded, while investigations are ongoing to establish the exact cause and circumstances,” Nahum Daso, spokesperson for Borno state police command, said in the statement.
Daso said police were conducting a sweep of the area in search of secondary devices.
The Christmas Eve attack is the latest in a series of attacks in Nigeria's troubled northern region, where the country is battling multiple armed groups, including Boko Haram and its splinter group, Islamic State West Africa Province, among others. Several thousand people have been killed, with millions displaced from their homes since 2009, according to the United Nations.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but the use of suicide bombers has been heavily attributed to Boko Haram, the Islamic militant group that has previously claimed responsibility for many such attacks across the northeastern region.
Analysts say the group's use of suicide bombers has subsided over the past few years, but it still has the capacity to launch such attacks. In July 2024, a three-pronged suicide attack on a wedding ceremony in Borno raised the specter of a renewed use of the method by the militant group.