Two suicide bombers who allegedly killed at least 31 people in Yola, the Adamawa State capital, North East, Nigeria had earlier faked a fight to attract crowd before detonating the bomb.

The explosion had allegedly claimed some 31 lives and injured 38 others in a crowded market in the city of Yola. ‘They staged-managed a fight to attract more people before they detonated the improvised Explosive Devices (IED),” police said Friday.

According Police spokesperson in the State, Othman Abubakar, “the explosives were strapped to their bodies before they entered the Jimeta Main Market after sundown on Thursday and “pretended to be fighting.”

The staged fight between the two men “attracted the attention of people nearby to see what was happening.”

“When people had gathered they detonated their explosives… They killed a sizeable number of people,” he added.

Police said the coordinator for the National Emergency Management Agency in Yola, Sa’ad Bello, gave casualty figures of 31 dead and 38 injured.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility but fingers will likely be pointed at Boko Haram, which had carried out several attacks in the north of the state in recent weeks.

Yola has also suffered attacks, but not in recent years. It had come to be seen as a relatively safe haven for hundreds of thousands of people forced to flee their homes further north because of the violence.

The Yola attack came hours after a suspected suicide bombing at a checkpoint outside a military barracks in Maiduguri, the capital of neighbouring Borno state that killed four people.