Another blast rips through Kaduna

A second explosion rocked a crowded market area in northern Nigeria’s Kaduna city on Wednesday, police said, after a suicide bomber targeting the convoy of a prominent cleric killed at least 25 people.

Kaduna police spokesman Aminu Lawan said casualty figures were not yet clear for the second blast in the Kawo area of the city, a few kilometres from the scene of the bombing on the convoy of Dahiru Bauchi, a cleric who has publicly criticised Boko Haram Islamists.

“We have recorded a blast which is apparently a suicide blast targeting the convoy of Sheikh Dahiru Bauchi,” who escaped unhurt, Kaduna police chief Umar Shehu said. “Twenty-five people have so far been confirmed dead,” he added.
The explosion went off at roughly 12:30pm (1130 GMT) as Bauchi’s convoy was driving in an open-roofed truck, greeting well-wishers who had assembled for the closing of a prominent Koranic festival.
Bauchi, like most of Nigeria’s prominent Muslim leaders, has publicly condemned Boko Haram’s brutal five-year uprising aimed at creating a strict Islamic state in the north.
The insurgents have accused Nigeria’s senior cleric of betraying the faith by submitting to the authority of a secular government, currently led by a devout Christian, President Goodluck Jonathan.
Boko Haram has claimed the killing of several clerics across the north, while assassination attempts targeting Nigeria’s second and third most powerful Islamic leaders have both failed.