(Reuters) – Boko Haram insurgents attacked the outskirts of Maiduguri in northeast Nigeria on Sunday, security sources said, their second assault in a week on a city they hope to make the capital of a breakaway Islamist state.
At least eight people were killed as the militants clashed with soldiers, witnesses and a hospital source said.
“There is heavy gunfire going on. Everybody is panicking and trying to flee the area,” Idris Abubakar, a resident of Polo suburb on the southwestern outskirts of the city, said.
The insurgents, who arrived in several armed pick-up trucks and on motor-bikes, attacked three places in the south of Maiduguri at around the same time, a security source said.
Troops backed by vigilantes had pushed them out of the southeastern outskirts of the city, a spokesman for a local pro-government vigilante group said.
Resident Babagana Lawan said a grenade fell on his house, killing his brother and two factory workers living with him.
In a separate incident in the town of Potiskum, 230 km (140 miles) west of Maiduguri, a suicide bomber blew himself up outside the house of federal legislator, Sabo Garbu. killing 10 people, two security sources told Reuters. Garbu was unhurt.
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