At least 24 killed in suicide bombings near Nigerian mosque

Explosions in and around a mosque in northeast Nigeria killed at least 24people on Tuesday, police said.

The blasts in the town of Mubi bore the hallmarks of Islamist militant group Boko Haram, which has waged an insurgency in Africa's most populous country since 2009 and often deploys suicide bombers in crowded places.

The attack took placea day after President Muhammadu Buhari met with U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House and discussed the threat from the Nigeria-based militant group.

This is the second time in six months that dozens have beenkilled in an attack on a Mubi mosque. In November, a teenage suicide bomber attacked worshippers as they gathered for morning prayers, killing at least 50 people in one of the region's deadliest assaults in years.

"As I am talking to you now, 24 persons are confirmed dead and the scene is cordoned off by anti-bomb squads and other security personnel," said Adamawa state police spokespersonOthman Abubakar.

The jihadist group on Thursday carried out an attack in Maiduguri, capital of neighbouring Borno state, that killed four people.

Deadly insurgency

More than 30,000 people have been killed in the insurgency, which has also forced some two million to flee their homes.

Abdullahi Yerima, police commissioner in Adamawa state, said a suicide bomber struck at the mosque at around 1 p.m. local time, and a second bomber detonated a device some 200 metres away as worshippers fled. More than a dozen were hurt, he said.

Boko Haram held territory in Adamawa state in 2014, but troops pushed the insurgents out in early 2015, and Mubi was relatively peaceful until a suicide bomb attack in November 2017 that killed 50 people.

Insecurity has become a politically charged subject in the run-up to a national election next year that President Muhammadu Buhari, who took office in 2015 with a promise to end Boko Haram's push to create an Islamic state in the northeast, has said he wants to contest.

Buhari was in Washington on Monday, where he met with U.S. President Donald Trump.