At least five suicide bombers targeted a village in Chad that is home to thousands of Nigerians who have fled Islamic extremist violence, killing at least 36 people and wounding about 50 others in what appeared to be coordinated attacks, officials said.
Authorities blamed the extremist Boko Haram group from neighbouring Nigeria for staging the attacks in the western village of Baga Sola on Saturday, according to a communique from government spokesman Hassan Sylla Bakari. It said 41 people had died, including the five suicide bombers who were identified as two women, two children and a man.
Female suicide bombers hit the market in Baga Sola when it was at its busiest, killing at least 16 people, said the director general of Chad’s gendarmerie, General Banyaman Cossingar. A second group of suicide bombers killed at least 22 people at a nearby refugee camp, he said. Cossingar gave a preliminary toll before the government released an official count. Cossingar’s figure of 38 apparently included two of the suicide bombers.
There were conflicting reports on the number of wounded. The government’s official count was 48, while Unicef said at least 53 people were wounded, including 14 children.
Police spokesman Paul Manka said the attackers staged five bombings, adding that two were near the refugee camp but not in it. “There were three explosions at the Baga Sola market and two explosions near the Dar-es-Salam refugee camp. From our information, the explosion was not in the refugee camp, but in a part of the village nearby,” Manka said.
It was not immediately possible to independently verify the differing claims due to the extremely remote location of the attacks.
