Three suicide attacks in Nigeria kill at least 18 people

Eighteen people were killed in suicide attacks on a wedding, a hospital and a funeral in north-eastern Nigeria on Saturday, authorities said.

The region has been scarred by more than a decade of violence by the extremist group Boko Haram. No group has claimed responsibility for the attacks.

In one of three explosions on Saturday in the town of Gwoza, a woman with a baby on her back set off an explosive device at a wedding ceremony, according to a state police spokesman.

“At about 15.45, a woman carrying a baby on her back detonated an improvised explosive device she had on her at a crowded motor park,” Borno State police spokesman Nahum Kenneth Daso said.

Female suicide bombers also targeted a hospital in Gwoza, which lies across the border from Cameroon. Another attack was carried out at the funeral for victims of the wedding blast, authorities said.

Eighteen people were killed, with more feared dead, and 42 injured in the attacks, according to the Borno State Emergency Management Agency.

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

Nineteen seriously injured people were taken to the regional capital Maiduguri, while 23 others were waiting to be moved, Mr Saidu said in the report.

A member of a militia assisting the military in Gwoza said two colleagues and a soldier were also killed in a separate attack on a security post, although authorities did not confirm this toll.

Although Boko Haram has lost ground in recent years, the group continues to attack rural communities in Nigeria regularly.

Throughout the insurgency, Boko Haram has repeatedly recruited young women and girls to carry out suicide attacks.

The group seized Gwoza in 2014 when its militants took over territory in northern Borno.

The town was taken back by the Nigerian military with help from Chadian forces in 2015, but the group has 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 the north-east of Nigeria.

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