An
explosion went off on Tuesday at a shopping centre in the Nigerian capital
Abuja, where an unexploded bomb was later discovered, rescue officials said.
The first blast
happened at about 21:00 at a shopping plaza in the city's Wuse II district,
spokesperson for the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), Yushau A
Shuaib, said in a statement.
Rescue workers
then rushed to the scene and cordoned off the area, where the unexploded bomb
was discovered, an official said.
"When we were
trying to find out what is happening, the anti-bomb squad discovered another
one. They just detonated it," the head of NEMA's Abuja office, Ishaya
Chonoko, told journalists at the scene.
"The good
thing is that there was no report of human casualty," he added.
Our reporter said
the area was swarming with rescue workers from several emergency services, but
that journalists were being kept several hundred metres back and so it was not
possible to survey any potential damage.
The shopping
centre is located in a commercial district of Abuja and is not particularly
close to any major government buildings.
Nigeria's Boko
Haram Islamists, responsible for scores of attacks in recent months, have
previously struck targets in and around the capital.
A suicide bomb attack
on UN headquarters in Abuja in August killed at least 25 people, while another
at the Abuja office of one of the country's most prominent newspapers left four
dead.
Intensive patrols
Most recently, on
22 June, a blast went off outside a nightclub in Abuja that shattered the
windows of nearby buildings but caused no casualties.
A police statement
said the late Tuesday blast occurred "near" the Banex Plaza shopping
mall, calling it "a low level explosion".
"The incident
had a zero casualty record - no life lost, no person injured and no car damaged
or burned," explained the statement from national police spokesperson
Frank Mba.
He warned
"mischief makers" against trying to sow further chaos in the capital
of Africa's most populous nation and said "intensive patrols" were
ongoing around the city.
Much of Boko
Haram's violence has been concentrated in northern Nigeria, particularly in the
northeast where they are believed to be based.
The group's
deadliest attack yet occurred on 20 January in the northern city of Kano, the
country's second-largest, when co-ordinated bombings and shootings killed at
least 185 people.
But they have in
recent months expanded the targets down to the centre of the country, where
Nigeria's beleaguered capital is located.
Abuja residents
and foreigners who visit regularly have since learned to live with security
checks and queues of cars waiting to be searched at prominent spots.
Boko Haram has
claimed attacks that have killed more than 1 000 people in Nigeria since mid-2009.
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