Kano, Nigeria:

At least 18 people were killed and 19 seriously wounded in a string of suicide attacks in northeastern Nigeria on Saturday, emergency services said.

In one of three blasts in the town of Gwoza, a female attacker with a baby strapped to her back detonated explosives in the middle of a wedding ceremony, according to a police spokesman.

The other attacks in the border town across from Cameroon targeted a hospital and a funeral for victims of the earlier wedding blast, authorities said.

At least 18 people were killed and 42 others injured in the attacks, according to the Borno State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA).

“So far, 18 deaths comprising children, men, females and pregnant women” have been reported, said Barkindo Saidu, the head of the agency, in a report seen by AFP.

Nineteen “seriously injured” people were taken to the regional capital Maiduguri, while 23 others were awaiting evacuation, Saidu said in the report.

A member of a militia assisting the military in Gwoza said two of his comrades and a soldier were also killed in another attack on a security post, though authorities did not immediately confirm this toll.

Boko Haram militants seized Gwoza in 2014 when the group took over swathes of territory in northern Borno.

The town was taken back by the Nigerian military with help from Chadian forces in 2015 but the group has since continued to launch attacks from mountains near the town.

Boko Haram has carried out raids, killing men and kidnapping women who venture outside the town in search of firewood and acacia fruits.

The violence has killed more than 40,000 people and displaced around two million in Nigeria’s northeast.

The conflict has spread to neighbouring Niger, Cameroon and Chad, prompting the formation of a regional military coalition to fight the militants.

 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

“Nigerian security forces have rescued dozens of captives mostly women and children held by Islamic extremist rebels in the country’s hard-hit north-eastern region,” the Army said.

The Nigerian Army said, on August 28, that 25 captives were rescued during “clearance operations” by its troops in Borno state’s Gwoza district, a hotbed for the jihadi violence that has upended lives and livelihoods in the region since 2009, when Boko Haram extremists launched an insurgency.

Fourteen of the captives were first to be rescued on Saturday in Gobara village while 11 others were freed on Sunday when troops raided the rebel hideout in Gava village, both around 130 km (80 miles) from Borno state capital, Maiduguri, said Army spokeman Onyema Nwachukwu.

The Army shared pictures of the freed hostages that included toddlers. Most of them looked malnourished and wore worn-out clothes, suggesting that they might have been held for a long time.

“All rescued victims are presently in troops’ custody undergoing profiling,” Onyema Nwachukwu said, describing the operations as part of the “unrelenting efforts to clear remnants of Boko Haram terrorists enclaves” in Borno and other states.

He said that seven members of a “Boko Haram terrorist family” surrendered to troops on Sunday in a separate operation. They included three adults and four children.

Boko Haram, whose name in the local Hausa language loosely translates to mean “Western education is a sin”, launched the 2009 insurgency to establish Islamic Shariah law in Nigeria. Now split into different factions, the most powerful backed by the Islamic State, the extremists often target women, children and security forces in remote parts of northeast Nigeria.

At least 35,000 people have been killed and 2.1 million people displaced as a result of the extremist violence which has spread to neighbouring Cameroon, Chad and Niger, according to data from UN agencies in Nigeria.