Jos Bomb Blasts Death Toll At Least 118 – NEMA

LAGOS (AFP) – At least 118 people were killed in a car
bomb attack in the central Nigerian city of Jos, the
country’s relief agency said on Tuesday, warning that
the death toll could rise further.
“The exact figure of the dead bodies recovered as of
now is 118,” Mohammed Abdulsalam, coordinator for
the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) in
the city, told AFP.
He added that “more bodies may be in the debris” of
buildings which collapsed due to the intensity of the
blasts.
Fifty-six people were injured in the twin blasts, said
Abdulsalam. The military said that improvised explosive
devices were hidden inside a truck and a minibus and
went off within 20 minutes of each other.
Chris Olakpe, the police commissioner of Plateau state
of which Jos is the capital, told reporters earlier that 46
people were killed and 45 others were injured.
He maintained later: “We are saying 46. That’s the
number we have in the morgues. But we are not ruling
out more bodies.”
Plateau state lies in the so-called Middle Belt of Nigeria,
where the largely Christian south meets the mainly
Muslim north, and has been the scene of long-standing
ethnic and sectarian conflict for years.
It has also been hit by Boko Haram militants, who have
been waging an insurgency in Nigeria’s northeast since
2009.