Police Assistant Superintendent Nathan Cheghan told the Associated Press 26 other were wounded in the attack.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the bombing in the Yobe state capital as people watched Brazil play Mexico, but suspicions fell on Islamist militia Boko Haram or a similar Islamist splinter group.
Police commissioner for Yobe state, Sanusi Ruf’ai, said the attack happened at about 8:15 p.m., shortly after the soccer match began.
The bomb blast follows several similar attacks in northern Nigeria in recent months. Just over two weeks ago, 14 people were killed in a bomb attack on a bar in the town of Mubi in Adamawa state, where people were watching soccer. In May three people were killed at a soccer viewing venue in Jos, the capital of Plateau state. And in April, two people died when gunmen opened fire on a soccer viewing venue in Yobe state.
In soccer-mad Nigeria, young men often crowd into bars, video halls and mass open air football screening venues to watch the game live via cable TV or large screens. For many who lack cable TV at home it is the only way to see World Cup soccer games live and other major soccer matches.
But Nigerian authorities have warned that venues screening soccer matches could be targeted by extremists who see the game as un-Islamic.
Authorities in Adamawa and Plateau states and the Federal Capital Territory have recently banned screenings of world cup soccer matches in public venues because of the risk of attacks. Police in other areas have warned venue owners to take extra security precautions.
Yobe, Borno and Adamawa states have been under a state of emergency for more than a year as the Nigerian government grapples with an insurgency that has killed thousands of people in recent years, shut down schools and caused thousands of farmers to desert their land and villagers to evacuate their homes.
Boko Haram kidnapped more than 300 girls from Chibok village in April, and the ensuing campaign for their release, under the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls focused global attention on the militant group.
Boko Haram’s attacks have increasingly targeted civilians. In an attack on a boarding school in Yobe state in February, dozens of school boys were shot in their beds, burned alive or had their throats cut. Hundreds of school teachers have been killed in northern Nigeria since last year. Markets and bus stations have been hit as well.
The group, fighting for an Islamic state across all Nigeria, opposes Western education and culture, which it sees as the products of corrupt infidels. The insurgency has deepened divisions between the mainly Muslim north and mainly Christian south in Africa’s most populous nation of about 170 million people.
Football viewing venues make easy targets for terror groups in Africa: during the soccer world cup in 2010 more than 70 people died in an attack by Somali terror group Al Shabab in the Ugandan capital Kampala. The U.S. embassy in Kampala recently issued a warning to avoid crowded football venues in Uganda because of the risk of attack.
In an attack Sunday in the Kenyan town of Mpeketoni, people watching a world cup soccer game at a local venue were among the victims. Some 60 people died in attacks Sunday and Monday on Mpeketoni and nearby villages, not far from the tourist area of Lamu on the north eastern Kenyan coast.
Both Kenya and Somalia have faced attacks by Shabab because of their military presence in Somalia, although Kenyan authorities blamed local political networks for the attacks Sunday and Monday.
There were fears the number of dead in the Damaturu attack could rise, with many seriously injured victims.
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