Two little girls approximately seven or eight years old blew themselves up in a northeastern Nigerian market on Sunday, killing themselves and wounding at least 17 others, witnesses said.

The girls "must have been seven or eight", a local militia member in Maiduguri told AFP.

Emergency services on-site in the town, the epicentre of the Boko Haram jihadist insurgency, said 17 people sustained "relatively serious" injuries.