Michael Olugbode
18 December 2011
Maiduguri — Three suspected members of the Boko Haram group were yesterday consumed by a blast which rocked a house suspected to be the group’s bomb factory located in the Shuwari area of Maiduguri, the Borno State capital. The blast which occurred around 9:00 a.m was heavy as it shook the entire neighbourhood to its foundation.
The three men were said to have been engrossed in the bomb making process as they were locked up in the house when the blast went off, totally destroying the house and shattering the adjoining building.
Residents of the area who spoke on the incident said they heard a loud bang which was followed by a thick smoke. A resident who simply identified himself as Ba’ina said “I was preparing to go to shop when I heard a scarry loud bang and I had to run into the safety of my house.”
THISDAY gathered that men of the Joint Task Force (JTF) in the town had to quickly cordoned off the whole area. JTF Spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Hassan Ifijeh Mohammed, who later briefed journalists confirmed the blast, saying it happened around 9:00 a.m.
He said investigations showed that the house was used by the group as a major factory for the production of Improvised Explosives Device (IED), saying three mutilated corpses of the suspected sect members responsible for the production of the explosive at the factory were found inside the house.
“The suspects were killed in the process of making an IED for deployment. The house was equally destroyed by the explosion. Efforts are on to track down other suspects and the owner of the house for further investigation,” he added.
Meanwhile, the group has threatened to extend its attacks to Kano city if the security services continue to arrest its members. Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau, had claimed in a letter sent to the state government and the media that Boko Haram members have been arrested over the past five months on the pretext that they were thieves and armed robbers.
“We are therefore compelled to write this letter to inform Kano residents of this development so that when we launch attacks in the city as we have been doing in Maiduguri, they should not blame us,” he said in the letter emailed from an address previously used by the sect.
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