Blast at Adamawa IDP camp: 7 confirmed dead

Blast at Adamawa IDP camp: 7 confirmed dead

Friday, September 11, 2015 4:15 pm


The bomb that went off in an internally displaced persons (IDP) camp on the outskirts of Yola, the Adamawa state capital in northeastern Nigeria on Friday, killed at least seven persons, a TVC reporter covering the disaster said.

The reporter also said 15 persons were affected by the blast, with some still in hospital, critically injured.

An official of the National Emergency Management Agency however said, only three persons died.

The blast, the first such attack on an IDP camp in Nigeria, occurred at a school in the hamlet of Malkohi, spokesman Manzo Ezekiel of the National Emergency Management Agency said.

Saad Bello, a NEMA coordinator in Adamawa, said three people were killed on the spot and others were taken to hospital.

“The bomb blast was around where the newly arrived IDPs were staying in a tent,” Ezekiel said, “We received additional IDPs from Cameroon…Some arrived yesterday. They’ve been arriving since Sunday and they’re distributed across three camps.”

Most IDPs are living in government-run camps, with host families or religious organisations in the city of Maiduguri in Borno state, the heartland of the insurgency.

Neighbouring Adamawa state was hosting over 250,000 people earlier this year in and around Yola and also received many women and children freed by Nigerian troops from Boko Haram camps.

Several cities in Adamawa also took in thousands of Nigerian refugees from Boko Haram attacks who were evicted from Cameroon last month and continue to flow in.


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