(Reuters) - A suicide bomber at a bus station in northeast Nigeria's Borno state killed at least 17 people on Thursday, a military source and an allied local vigilante said.
A second bomber tried to detonate his explosives in the same bus station in the town of Biu, but was stopped by the crowd and beaten to death, vigilante Ibrahim Jaton said.
"A young man came to Tashan Gandu motor park and our boys stopped him for search at the check point but he refused to stop and all we heard was a loud sound," Jaton said. "The whole spot was scattered within minutes".
The use of suicide bombers has become a common tactic of Boko Haram since last year as the group expanded territory and became stronger and more deadly.
But in the past three weeks it has begun to suffer a string of defeats in a military offensive by Nigeria and neighbors Cameroon, Niger and Chad, all of which have been destabilized by the Islamists. A spate of attacks on civilians by the militants in the past few days seem aimed at taking revenge.
Suicide bombers struck two bus stations in different parts of northern Nigeria on Tuesday, killing at least 26 people in attacks President Goodluck Jonathan blamed on Boko Haram, the Islamist militant group he said would soon be defeated.
Nigeria's neighbors are stepping up attacks against Boko Haram, but with the result that they too are being targeted.
Two people aboard a horse-drawn cart were killed in Niger on Thursday when they ran over a mine thought to have been planted by the Islamist insurgents.
(Reporting by Lanre Ola, Writing by Tim Cocks,; Editing by Angus MacSwan)
