A suicide bombing targeting a major Shia festival in northeast Nigeria on Monday killed 15 people and injured some 50 others in a city repeatedly under attack by the armed group Boko Haram, a local cleric told Agence France-Presse.
"We lost 15 of our members in a suicide blast at the end of our Ashura procession," said Mustapha Lawan Nasidi, the head of the Shia community in the targeted city of Potiskum in Yobe state.
He said that 50 people were also injured and that several others died when troops who deployed to the scene opened fire. There was no immediate response from the military.
It is the first attack in months in Potiskum by suspected members of Boko Haram, which is Sunni.
Boko Haram has been recently seizing towns and villages in neighboring Borno and Adamawa states, hoisting the black-and-white flag of Al-Qaeda and declaring an Islamic caliphate in a large area bordering Cameroon.
Nigeria's military announced that Boko Haram had agreed to an immediate ceasefire on Oct. 17, and government officials said they expected more than 200 kidnapped schoolgirls to be released quickly as a result.
But the fighting and abductions have continued unabated, and Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau said in a video released Friday that he had never agreed to a truce.
He dashed hopes for the speedy release of the girls, abducted from a boarding school in northeastern Chibok town in April, saying they had all converted to Islam and been "married off."
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