Mosque attack kills 50 in Northeast Nigeria

Bloomberg

At least 50 people were killed in a suicide blast in a northeastern Nigerian town, the deadliest mosque bombing in three years by suspected Boko Haram militants.
The teenage male assailant entered a mosque in the town of Mubi strapped with improvised explosives and detonated them as people gathered at dawn for prayers, Adam-awa state police spokesman Othman Abubakar said by phone from the state cap-
ital, Yola. The police are investigating the incident, he said, declining to comment on
who might be responsible for the attack.
It is the deadliest mosque attack since 2014, when more than 100 people were killed in suicide blasts targeting the main mosque in northern Nigeria’s biggest city of Kano.
While no group took responsibility, it fell into a pattern of violence carried out by the Boko Haram militant group in its bid since 2009
to impose its version of rule in Africa’s most populous country of more than 180
million people.
“The attack clearly underscores the fact that Boko Haram is not yet defeated and continually poses a serious challenge to security, as
well as to humanitarian and reconstruction efforts in the northeast,” Nnamdi Obasi, senior analyst at the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, said in an emailed
response to questions.