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Timothy Olanrewaju, Maiduguri
A Cameroonian official has denied reports that 30 people were killed by a suicide bomb explosion in a Borno border town on Monday.
A bomb explosion on a bridge at Gamboru, a Borno commercial town located on the Nigeria-Cameroon border, on Monday evening reportedly killed about 30 people. More than 30 were also said to have been injured in the incident at the bridge which is also near a crowded market.
The incident occurred at about 5 pm, according to residents in the town, twice attacked by Boko Haram. The town was once seized by the terrorists and has also experienced more than two bomb blasts, fueling speculation the Monday incident might have been perpetrated by Boko Haram bombers.
Related: 30 feared killed in Borno terror bomb blast
But the Cameroonian governor of Far North Region, Mr Midjiyawa Bakary, dismissed reports that the incident was a suicide bomb attack by Boko Haram.
A regional news medium quoted the Cameroonian governor as saying that the incident was rather an accidental grenade explosion which occurred on the Nigerian side of the El Beid Bridge on Monday evening as some children were playing with an unexploded grenade found on the bridge.
“There is a local market there and many people were crossing the bridge at the time of the blast. The nine people who died were all Nigerians, while five of the 26 injured were Cameroonians,” Mr Bakary told the East African news.
Some media reports, including international news agencies, had earlier said 30 people were killed in the blast and 34 injured in the town situated some 148 kilometres to Maiduguri, the Borno State capital.
The El Beid Bridge in Gamboru links Nigeria with a Cameroon town, with half of the bridge on the Nigerian side while the other part thrusts into Cameroon.
Cameroonian soldiers are fighting alongside their Nigerian counterparts against Boko Haram at the regional military cooperation, the Multi-National Joint Task Force (MNJTF), around the Lake Chad region.
