* Another nine persons killed in Askira-Uba villages by Boko Haram militants
Forty four people died in the twin bombs that rocked the city of Jos, Plateau state, Sunday night, a spokesman of the National Emergency Management Agency said.
Abdussalam Mohammed, coordinator of NEMA in the city said 67 people were also wounded.
file photo: A man walks past blood stains and rubble after twin suicide blasts at Kantin Kwari textile market in Kano
The two bombs, which went off at separate places were blamed on the Islamic extremist group Boko Haram.
One exploded at a crowded mosque and the second at an elite Muslim restaurant. The wounded were being treated in hospitals, Mohammed said.
The explosion at the Yantaya Mosque came as leading cleric Sani Yahaya of the Jama’atu Izalatul Bidia organization, which preaches peaceful co-existence of all religions, was addressing a crowd during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, according to survivors.
Another bomb exploded at Shagalinku, a restaurant patronized by state governors and other elite politicians seeking specialties from Nigeria’s mainly Muslim north.
Jos has been a hotspot for violent religious confrontations and has been targeted in the past by bomb blasts claimed by Boko Haram extremists that have killed hundreds of people.
Sunday’s attacks are the latest in a string blamed on Boko Haram that have killed more than 200 people over the past week in northeast Nigeria.
The extremists returned Sunday to northeastern villages attacked three days earlier, killing nine villagers and burning down 32 churches and about 300 homes, said Stephen Apagu, chairman of a vigilante self-defense group in Borno state’s Askira-Uba local government area.
He said the vigilantes killed three militants.