KANO: The death toll from an explosion near a bus station in Gombe, northeast Nigeria, has risen to 10, a doctor and nurse at the hospital treating the injured told AFP on Friday.

“We received 10 dead bodies from the blast at the Bauchi motor park (bus station),” a doctor at the Gombe Specialist Hospital said, requesting anonymity as he is not authorized to speak to the media.

The blast happened at about 8:30 p.m. (1930 GMT) on late Thursday after a woman enquired about the destination of a bus leaving for the central city of Jos at the terminus, witnesses said.

It bore the hallmarks of the Boko Haram, who have hit a number of bus stations and crowded markets in recent weeks, including with suicide bombers.

A nurse at the Gombe Specialist Hospital, who also asked to remain anonymous, confirmed the death toll and said of the injured: “Eight people are now responding to treatment. The wounds are mostly cuts and burns.”

“The explosion was from an explosive left by a woman in her handbag beside a bus waiting to convey passengers to Jos,” he said in an account supported by a nearby food seller.

Nigeria’s military insists that it finally has Boko Haram in the run, after more than 13,000 people have been killed and some 1.5 million left homeless.

President-elect Muhammadu Buhari on Wednesday vowed to crush Boko Haram, vowing to rid Nigeria of the scourge of “terrorism.”

The attack is the latest in a string of similar explosions against so-called “soft targets” such as busy bus stations and crowded markets in the restive northeast, which has been hit for the last six years by Boko Haram militants.

The group has been pushed out of captured territory in Yobe, Borno and Adamawa states since February by a four-nation coalition of troops from Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon.

Since then, the group has reverted to guerrilla tactics, including suicide bombings and attacks on civilians in urban centres.

Garkuwa said he loaded the casualties into a vehicle while Yusuf Darazo, who sells food near the bus station, said the female suspect left her bag after being told the bus’s destination.

“No-one suspected her. People around assumed she was making calls before the bus filled up,” he said.

“As she was talking in the phone she moved away from the bus toward a row of kiosks, as if she wanted to buy something, leaving her bag where she was standing.

“She disappeared and the bag exploded soon after, setting the bus on fire. I saw five dead and several injured.”

Boko Haram fighters were suspected at the weekend of attacking a number of polling stations in Gombe state as Nigerians went to the polls to elect a new president.

At least seven people were killed and there was a wave of attacks on Saturday and Sunday in neighboring Bauchi state, prompting an indefinite round-the-clock curfew, including in the capital, Bauchi city. The lock-down has now been lifted.

Residents in Kasheri, about 60 km from Gombe city, and nearby Pindiga and Tumu, reported seeing suspected Boko Haram fighters and that they were firing in the air. Some were barefoot and appeared disorientated, asking for directions, they added.