MAIDUGURI: At least nine people were killed in a blast at a bus park in northeastern Nigeria, blamed on a bomb planted by suspected militants who have stepped up attacks in Borno state, a local lawmaker and residents said.
Borno has been the heartland of an Islamist insurgency for the past 16 years, which has killed thousands of Nigerians and driven tens of thousands from their homes.
Villagers from Mairari village in Borno’s Guzamala district were waiting for transport when a bomb detonated on Saturday, killing at least nine people, said Abdulkarim Lawan, the lawmaker for the area.
Lawan, who is also speaker of Borno state assembly, said Mairari village was now largely deserted due to frequent attacks by Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province, who are also increasingly using improvised explosives.
“Terrorists who have been monitoring their movements planted IEDs at the local bus stop, which exploded while they were waiting to board commercial vehicles back to their destinations,” he said.
Borno state police spokesperson Nahum Kenneth Daso confirmed the incident but said he had no details.
Bunu Bukar, a petty trader at the bus rank said on Monday the IED was tripped when passengers were boarding a mini bus, killing the nine instantly and injuring several others.
Nigeria has witnessed a rise in insurgent attacks since January, with militants targeting civilians and military bases.
Bomb blast kills nine at Nigeria bus park in Borno
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Bomb blast kills nine at Nigeria bus park in Borno
EU regulators hit Elon Musk’s X with 120 million euro fine for breaching bloc’s social media law
- The European Commission issued the decision after a two-year investigation under the Digital Services Act
- They cited issues with X’s blue checkmarks, which they called “deceptive,” and failures in its ad database and data access for researchers
LONDON: European Union regulators on Friday fined Elon Musk’s social media platform X 120 million euros ($140 million) for failing to comply with the bloc’s digital regulations.
The European Commission issued its decision following an investigation it opened two years ago into X under the 27-nation bloc’s Digital Services Act. Also known as the DSA, its a sweeping rulebook that requires platforms to take more responsibility for protecting European users and cleaning up harmful or illegal content and products on their sites, under threat of hefty fines.
The Commission said it was punishing X, previously known as Twitter, because of three different breaches of the DSA’s transparency requirements. The decision could rile President Donald Trump, whose administration has lashed out at digital regulations from Brussels and vowed to retaliate if American tech companies are penalized.
Regulators said X’s blue checkmarks broke the rules because of their “deceptive design” that could expose users to scams and manipulation.
X also fell short of the requirements for its ad database and giving access to researchers access to public data.
