Nigeria: 30 killed in triple suicide blasts in Borno

At least 30 people were killed and 40 others injured after three suicide bombers, including two girls and a boy, detonated explosives at Konduga village, a remote town in Borno state, in northeastern Nigeria, authorities said on Monday.

One of the bombers detonated his explosives outside a cinema hall where soccer fans had gathered to watch a match on Sunday night in Konduga. While the two girls blew themselves up a few kilometres from the hall, Al Jazeera reported.

"The death toll from the attack has so far increased to 30. We have over 40 people injured," Usman Kachalla, head of operations at the State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA), was quoted as saying.

According to Ali Hassan, the leader of a self-defence group in the town, the owner of the hall prevented one of the bombers from entering the venue.

"There was a heated argument between the operator and the bomber who blew himself up," Hassan said.

Hassan said most of the victims were from outside the football viewing centre.

He added that the high number of fatalities was because emergency responders had been unable to reach the site of the blast quickly. Nor were they equipped to deal with large numbers of wounded.

Meanwhile, Ikon Abdullahi, a spokesman for the national emergency response team, told CNN that many of those wounded in the blasts have been evacuated to specialist hospitals in the Maiduguri as local hospitals do not have enough personnel and resources to handle the casualties.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but authorities are suspecting that Boko Haram, a Jihadi outfit operating in northeastern Africa, has carried out the attack. The faction typically carries out suicide attacks against soft civilian targets such as mosques, markets and bus stations, often using young women and girls as bombers.

The last suicide attack was in April when two female suicide bombers blew themselves up outside the garrison town of Monguno, killing a soldier and a vigilante and injuring another soldier.