The armed group Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP) has claimed responsibility for an explosion in Nigeria’s Taraba state that killed or injured 30 persons, signifying an extension of the territory where the ISIL offshoot operates in the country.
The explosion occurred on Tuesday in the rural hamlet of Iware, with three persons killed and 19 injured, according to local authorities. They could not be reached for comment on the ISWAP claim or casualty figure on Thursday.
ISWAP hailed those who exploded the device in the market as “soldiers of the caliphate in central Nigeria” in a statement issued late Wednesday on a Telegram chat channel used by the group.
The attack targeted “a gathering of infidel Christians,” according to the statement, which expressed joy that the drinking place had been harmed. It did not divide the number of casualties into dead and injured.
For more than a decade, northeast Nigeria has been wracked by rebellions, but Taraba, at the eastern edge of Nigeria’s core region, has never seen similar attacks.
Crime and violence have increased across Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, compounded by the economic misery brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Armed robberies are rampant, and kidnappings for ransom have grown increasingly regular, while mass abductions of children from schools, as well as indiscriminate attacks on towns and villages by armed gangs, have occurred in the country’s northwest.
However, the largest and longest-running security issue is in the northeast, where Boko Haram and ISWAP, which arose from the former, have massacred, kidnapped, and robbed on a massive scale while fighting the Nigerian military.
