Five people were killed in two suicide bombings in northeast Nigeria, police said on Friday, in the latest attacks blamed on Boko Haram jihadists. Borno state police spokesman Murtala Ibrahim said two women with explosives strapped to their bodies blew themselves up in the Konduga area on Thursday night, "killing themselves and five others".

"Six persons sustained various degrees of injuries," he said in a statement about the attack, which happened at about 10:45 pm (2145 GMT) in the Mandarari area. According to a member of the civilian militia enforcing security, the first bomber detonated her explosives near a group of people, killing four and injuring six. A young girl was killed in the second explosion, he told AFP. Boko Haram has increasingly resorted to suicide attacks against civilians and security positions, as it has been weakened by a sustained military counter-insurgency.

Checkpoints, camps for the displaced and "soft" targets such as mosques have been repeatedly hit in recent months, particularly in the Borno state capital, Maiduguri. Many of the attackers who have tried to get through security at the city limits have come from the direction of Konduga, which is about 35 kilometres (22 miles) away by road. Civilians have been worst affected by the eight-year conflict, which has killed at least 20,000 in Nigeria alone and made more than 2.6 million others homeless.

Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2017