El-classico Football fans killed by Jos Bomb explosion

JOS (AFP) – Three bomb blasts targeting bars where fans watched the Real Madrid-Barcelona football match rocked the city of Jos, officials said Sunday, with one death and 10 injuries reported.

The bombs were said to have been planted near outdoor bars — called “viewing centres” in Nigeria — late Saturday in the city, which has been hit by waves of violence between Christian and Muslim ethnic groups in recent years.

“So far, we have evacuated 10 people that sustained various degrees of injuries from the blasts to hospital,” said Red Cross official Manata Bambe, who declined to comment on the number of deaths.

An official with the Stefanos Foundation, a Christian NGO, said one person was killed.

“There were three blasts, all targeting soccer viewing centres,” said Mark Lipdo. “The bombs were detonated outside the viewing centres, which was responsible for the low casualty recorded.”

He said of the 10 people wounded, four were in critical condition, including two who were in a coma.

“One person was killed in the blast,” he said, adding that the victim had been decapitated by the explosion.

Pam Ayuba, spokesman for the governor of Plateau state, where Jos is the capital, also reported three blasts with one person killed, though he said seven were wounded.

The explosions occurred in predominantly Christian areas of the city.

Violence in recent years in Jos and the surrounding area between Christian and Muslim ethnic groups has killed thousands of people.

Plateau state lies in the middle-belt region between the mainly Muslim north and predominantly Christian south of Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation.

Nigeria’s north has been hit by scores of attacks blamed on the Islamist sect known as Boko Haram, which also claimed responsibility for the August suicide bombing of UN headquarters in the capital Abuja which killed 24 people.

The Islamist group also claimed responsibility for a string of bomb blasts on Christmas Eve 2010 in Jos, but it was unclear whether it was involved in Saturday night’s attacks.