Weekend attacks kill 30, injure four in Nigeria

The Boko Haram group is suspected in the attacks, which followed Friday's inauguration of President Muhammadu Buhari, who said he is moving the headquarters for the Nigerian military's fight against the extremists to Maiduguri from the capital of Abuja.

Sunday's blast came from explosives concealed in bags of charcoal at the Gamboru market, said trader Jafar Aminu.

“The explosion did not kill anyone but injured four persons, including one whose arm was completely ripped off by the blast,” Aminu said.

The market in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state, has been hit by several attacks that have killed dozens of people in the past three years.

Maiduguri is the birthplace of Boko Haram, which for nearly six years has led an uprising in northeastern Nigeria that has killed an estimated 13,000 people in a campaign of bombings, hit-and-run attacks and abductions.

After a 2009 crackdown against the group ended with hundreds dead in the Borno state capital, Maiduguri, and its founder killed in police custody, Boko Haram stepped up its campaign for its strict interpretation of Shariah in the northeast. It eventually spread its campaign of massacres, bombings and kidnappings across much of Nigeria’s north, hitting the northeast hardest.

Last year the group started taking over entire towns, routing the demoralized and underequipped military from parts of Borno and neighboring Yobe and Adamawa states, controlling an area about the size of Belgium.

Nigeria's military says Boko Haram's main fighting force is trapped in the northeastern Sambisa Forest. But the insurgents keep attacking Maiduguri, which is 125 miles away, and hundreds of thousands of refugees who have been forced from their homes have swollen Maiduguri's population.

Thirteen people were killed Saturday in Maiduguri when Boko Haram fighters fired rocket-propelled grenades on the western outskirts — a new tactic that destroyed several homes, according to witnesses.

Later Saturday, a suicide bomber blew himself up outside a Maiduguri mosque, killing 16.

Also Sunday, the insurgents attacked the town of Fika in the neighboring state of Yobe. No one was killed, but several government offices were burned down and shops were looted, said local merchant Modu Fika.

Al Jazeera with The Associated Press