ISIL group claims Nigeria bombing, says about 30 killed or hurt | Armed Groups News

For over a decade, parts of the north have been under attack by a variety of armed groups, including Boko Haram and its splinter groups.

ISIL affiliate the Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP) has claimed responsibility for an explosion that it said killed or injured 30 people at a market where alcohol was sold in Taraba State, Nigeria, marking an expansion of the area where the extremist group operates in the country.

The explosion took place on Tuesday in Iware, a rural town, and local police initially said three people were killed and 19 injured. They could not immediately be reached on Thursday to comment on the ISWAP claim or casualty count.

In a statement posted late on Wednesday on a Telegram messaging channel used by ISWAP, the group described those who detonated the bomb in the market as “soldiers of the caliphate in central Nigeria”.

The statement said the attack had struck “a gathering of infidel Christians” and expressed satisfaction that the drinking spot had been damaged. It did not break down the casualty figure into dead and injured.

Northeast Nigeria has been in the grip of rebellions for over a decade, but Taraba, located at the eastern end of Nigeria’s central region, has not been attacked before.

Across Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, there has been a rise in crime and violence, exacerbated by the economic hardship caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Armed robberies are rife everywhere, kidnappings for ransom have become increasingly common, and the northwest has been hit by mass abductions of children from schools as well as indiscriminate attacks on towns and villages by armed gangs.

The worst and longest-running crisis remains the one in the northeast, where Boko Haram and ISWAP, which broke out of the former, have killed, abducted and looted on a massive scale while fighting against the Nigerian military.