Three killed and 26 wounded in Yobe state, a day after bombing involving 10-year-old girl killed at least 16 in Borno state

After a week of bloodshed unleashed by Islamists Boko Haram left hundreds of civilians dead across north-eastern Nigeria, Ibrahim Abu wanted to try to forget. He and three friends had met for tea in an outdoor bar beside an open-air market in Potiskum, a small town in Nigeria’s Yobe state, when an explosion threw them to the floor.

“I looked up and saw body parts everywhere, then the body of a little girl cut in two,” he said, his voice still shaking as he recounted the incident. As traders scrambled around him, he felt paralysed with shock. The body of another child was being pulled out of the rubble. By the end of the afternoon, three other people were dead and 26 wounded.

The bombing by two suspected child suicide bombers in a crowded market on Sunday capped a week of horror and marked an ominous escalation in violence with elections in Africa’s most populous nation less than five weeks away.

A day earlier in neighbouring Borno state another young girl, who is also believed to have been about 10 years old, was stopped for a security check in the capital’s main market when bombs strapped to her detonated, killing at least 16 people.

Residents across Borno were already reeling after Boko Haram militants rampaged through remote villages for almost four days in what Amnesty International and the Nigerian army said was the group’s deadliest attack.

In Baga, a fishing settlement on the shores of Lake Chad, fleeing residents were unable to count the bodies that littered the fields. Amnesty put the number of dead at 2,000, although it didn’t say how it had verified the number. Other estimates suggested 600 was a more likely figure.

Neither the president, Goodluck Jonathan, nor his main rival, Muhammadu Buhari, have addressed the massacres in Baga. As hundreds poured into the state capital from the hinterland, the government said it had launched ground action backed by air strikes to reclaim the area.

“We are living in fear,” said Sani Mohamed, a videographer in the capital who said displaced people were sleeping rough on the outskirts of the city. “There is panic all over Maiduguri due to constant influx of people with horrific tales of attacks. Any security we have here feels very fragile.”

Maiduguri has been patrolled by the military since a state of emergency in May last year. But soldiers have long complained that money meant for equipment has been funnelled away by senior officials, leaving them inadequately armed against the insurgents’ sophisticated weapons. Some residents said soldiers sometimes held off attacks for hours, but when reinforcements failed to arrive they deserted their posts in villages linked by sandy roads lined with burnt-out relics of the group’s campaign.

Urban areas have also been targeted. Damaturu, the state capital of Yobe, was hit on Thursday by “massive attacks from different angles,” Nigeria’s defence headquarters said. “Troops are on a mopping-up operation in Damaturu after foiling attempts by terrorists to occupy parts of the town.”

A day of gunfire in the capital had just ended when the main police station in nearby Potiskum was targeted. Two people died after a man was brought to the police station with his car, the state police commissioner said.

“We took the suspect to the station and the car … exploded and killed one of my men and a driver. The suspect did not die … he is still in our custody,” Marcus Danladi told Reuters. Within 24 hours, the town was hit by the market attacks.

More than 10,000 people were killed last year as a result of Boko Haram’s quest to carve out an Islamic caliphate in religiously mixed Nigeria. An estimated 1.6 million people have been driven from their homes during the five-year insurgency, mostly in the Muslim-majority north.