Local Editor

More than 60 people died in the northeastern Nigerian city of Maiduguri as suicide bombers targeted civilians and the army clashed with suspected Takfiri militants on Sunday.

In the deadliest attack, two female suicide bombers killed about 40 people near a mosque in the Sulemanti area of the capital of Borno state, according to Hassan Ibrahim, a member of a local vigilante militia group. Two other bombers detonated explosives behind a Nigerian National Petroleum Corp. gasoline station killed another 19 people, he said.

More than 10 were killed in clashes between militants and the armed forces at the Jiddari Polo area, where the insurgents attacked a bar and residences, and Alidawari, Ibrahim said. The army said it intercepted and killed 10 suicide bombers on the outskirts of Maiduguri.

"The troops laid ambush on the terrorists' suspected routes along Damboa road and eliminated them," Colonel Mustapha Anka, an army spokesman, said in a statement late Sunday. "The explosive-ordnance device team has been mobilized and they are clearing the debris."

Maiduguri, the birthplace of the Takfiri militant group Boko Haram, was last attacked by a bomber about a month ago. While Nigeria's military this year pushed back and dislodged Boko Haram's hold on territory in the northeast, suicide attacks and sporadic violence in the region continue.

Boko Haram militants are in the sixth year of a violent campaign that had killed thousands to impose their brand of law on Africa's most populous country and biggest economy.

President Muhammadu Buhari, who took office in May, said last week that Nigeria had technically won the war against the insurgents and that Boko Haram can't launch conventional attacks against the armed forces. Buhari had given the military a deadline to defeat the group by the end of this year.

The conflict displaced more than two million Nigerians who had fled the violence in the northeast that had also spilled over into neighboring Cameroon, Chad and Niger. While Buhari wants those living in displacement camps to return home next year, authorities in the region have struggled to convince them to go back to their communities.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team