Multiple blasts hit Nigeria’s Maiduguri city after years of calm

2026-03-16 - 22:54

Residents gather near the scene of an explosion in Maiduguri. (AFP pic) MAIDUGURI: Multiple explosions rocked the northeastern Nigerian city of Maiduguri Monday evening, police said, on the back of an overnight attack on a military post. Combined with the attack on the military position the evening prior and a mosque bombing in December, the assaults have wrecked a yearslong peaceful stretch in the city, which had become a relative oasis of calm as Nigeria’s long-running insurgency was pushed to the rural hinterlands. An AFP reporter at a city hospital saw dozens of wounded people seeking treatment from Monday’s blasts, as well as multiple bodies covered by sheets on the sidewalk outside, though no death toll was immediately available. “I heard a heavy explosion and later realized it was a bomb,” Alhaji Bukar Grema, who owns a phone shop near one of the blast sites and helped evacuate the victims, told AFP. Dauda Iliya, a media aide to the Borno State government, said authorities were working to confirm casualties from the explosions at the city’s main market and the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital. Idris Suleiman Gimba, who works with the National Blood Service Commission, said there was also a blast near