Boko Haram has killed at least 80 people in a terrorist attack on a city and a town in northeast Nigeria using rocket launchers and several suicide bombers.
Thirty people were killed and 90 were wounded in overnight bomb attacks and shoot outs in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state on Sunday.
A further 20 people were killed during a bomb attack on a mosque elsewhere in the city at dawn on Monday and a twin suicide bombing also killed at least 30 people in Madagali, a town 95 miles southeast of Maiduguri.
Witnesses said two women blew themselves up at a market near a busy bus station at about 9 a.m.
The attacks come as a blow to Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari after he declared that security forces had “effectively won the war” against the Islamist insurgents.
Maiduguri is home to many refugees who had already fled Boko Haram over the course of their six year violent uprising.
It is also allegedly the birthplace of the terror group – who are believed to become more radicalised following an attack by Nigerian security services on their compound in 2009.
Around 20,000 people have been killed in Nigeria and many more elsewhere as the insurgents have spilled into Cameroon, Niger and Chad.
Local civil servant Yunusa Abdullahi said: “We are under siege. We don’t know how many of these bombs or these female suicide bombers were sneaked into Maiduguri last night.”
Nigerian troops “intercepted and destroyed” 13 suicide bombers and arrested one female suicide bomber when repelling the attackers, Major General Lamidi Adeosun – the commander in charge of the war against Boko Haram – told reporters.
A statement issued by the Nigerian government said soldiers had arrested seven Boko Haram bomb experts on Sunday.
