Twin blasts in Nigeria capital kill 15

Two bomb blasts that hit the outskirts of the Nigerian capital Abuja have killed at least 15 people and injured many more, officials say.

The first struck near a police station in Kuje, 25 miles (40km) from Abuja. The second hit a bus stop in Nyanya.

No group has said it carried out the attacks yet but suspicion has fallen on Boko Haram Islamists.

While the militant group has attacked Abuja before, its insurgency has mostly focused on the north-east.

Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state, is where the militants first based its campaign to carve out an Islamist state in 2009.

Friday’s explosions in two suburbs of Abuja happened “almost simultaneously” at about 22:30 (21:30 GMT), a spokesman for the National Emergency Management Agency said.

The explosives, Manzo Ezekiel said, appeared to be “the same kind of explosives used in the insurgency” in the north-east.

Thirteen people died in the Kuje blast, while two died at Nyanya, an agency statement said.

Two separate attacks at the same bus station in Nyanya killed 90 people last year.

Some 17,000 people are said to have been killed since Boko Haram began its insurgency in 2009. It has intensified attacks since Muhammadu Buhari became president in May, vowing to defeat the insurgents.

This year, security forces have managed to reclaim most of the territory captured by Boko Haram fighters and freed a number of people kidnapped. BBC