Maiduguri (Nigeria) (AFP) - Coordinated explosions staged by suspected suicide bombers tore through a busy market and other areas in Nigeria’s northeastern city of Maiduguri, killing at least 23 people and wounding more than 100 others, police said on Tuesday.

The three blasts detonated on Monday evening just after Muslims broke their fast for the Ramadan holy month, striking a main market, the entrance of the city’s largest teaching hospital and a post office axis, in one of the worst recent attacks on the capital of Borno state, authorities and witnesses said.

The military blamed the blasts in the city of around 1.2 million people on suspected Boko Haram militants.

It came after an attack on a military post overnight Sunday to Monday, which authorities blamed on suspected jihadists, and as President Bola Tinubu was preparing for a state visit to the UK on Tuesday, the first by a Nigerian leader in 37 years.

Witnesses described the panic as people fled the blast at the market towards an exit that passes through the post office area, where minutes later another blast hit.

“We were sitting (at the market) when we suddenly heard a loud explosion. Everyone immediately started running in fear. While people were still fleeing, another explosion occurred around the post office area,” said Modu Bukar, 27.

Another survivor Mala Mohammed, 31, told AFP that many people “ran toward the post office area because the market entrance and the post office are not far apart. Unfortunately, as they were running towards post office, the person who had the explosive device ran into the crowd while people were still trying to escape.”

Combined with the attack on the military position and a mosque bombing in December, the assaults have wrecked a peaceful stretch in the city, which had become a relative oasis of calm as Nigeria’s long-running insurgency was pushed to the rural hinterlands.

Maiduguri is the town where Boko Haram originated. The jihadist group launched its campaign to establish a caliphate in the country in 2009.

The violence slowed from its peak in 2015 but fighters from Boko Haram and rival jihadist group Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) have recently stepped up attacks in northeastern Nigeria.

Their campaign has killed more than 40,000 people and displaced around two million.

“Preliminary investigation reveals that the incidents were carried out by suspected suicide bombers,” police spokesman Nahum Kenneth Daso said in a statement.

“Regrettably, a total of twenty three (23) persons lost their lives, while one hundred and eight (108) others sustained varying degrees of injuries,” he added.

An anti-jihadist militia member told AFP the death toll from the explosions could be as high as 31.

An AFP reporter at a city hospital on Monday evening saw dozens of wounded people seeking treatment, as well as bodies covered by sheets on the pavement outside.

- ‘Barbaric’ attacks -

“The explosions were carried out by suspected Boko Haram terrorist suicide bombers who detonated improvised explosive devices at three different locations within the city, namely the post office area, Monday Market axis and the entrance to the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital (UMTH) during the period of Iftar (breaking of fast),” military spokesman Sani Uba said in a statement.

Police said that “normalcy has been fully restored in the affected areas” and that security forces have increased their “presence and surveillance across Maiduguri and its environs to prevent any further occurrences”.

Borno state Governor Babagana Zulum called the apparent bombings “barbaric” and said “the recent surge in attacks is not unconnected with intense military operations in the Sambisa forest”, a known jihadist stronghold.

The earlier attack was launched around midnight on a Nigerian military post in Ajilari Cross district, a southwestern suburb of Maiduguri and just a few kilometres (miles) from the airport.

That same evening also saw an attack in the Damboa local government area, south of Maiduguri.

Maiduguri, once the scene of daily shootings and bombings, had been relatively calm in recent years, with attacks peaking in the mid-2010s.

The last major attack was in 2021, when Boko Haram jihadists fired mortars at the city, killing 10 people.

But in December, an unclaimed bombing – again a suspected suicide attacker – killed at least seven people in a city mosque.

And in the countryside surrounding Maiduguri, violence has continued.

Last month, the United States began deploying 200 troops to Nigeria to provide technical and training support to the country’s soldiers in fighting jihadist groups.