3 suicide bombers kill at least 18 in marketplace

DAKAR, Senegal — An attack by three suicide bombers has left at least 18 people dead and more than 20 others wounded at a fish market outside the sprawling Nigerian city that gave rise to the Islamist extremist group Boko Haram, officials and news reports said Saturday.

The bombers set off explosives Friday at the market about 15 miles from the center of the sprawling city of Maiduguri, Reuters reported. No one claimed responsibility for the attacks, but they were similar to scores of others in and around the city in the past few months.

The attackers were all female, according to The Associated Press, and the victims were mostly women and children, local news outlets reported. Boko Haram has been known to deploy young women and children as suicide bombers, in addition to sending men to attack mosques, markets and other places where crowds gather.

The police commissioner of Borno state, Damian Chukwu, said at least 22 people were wounded in the attack Friday, according to Reuters.

The war with Boko Haram, which has displaced millions, is entering its ninth year. Militants raging against decades of economic inequality and government corruption in the region want to create a state that adheres to a harsh version of Islam. In their quest, they have burned villages, slaughtered men and boys who refuse to join their ranks, raped and enslaved women and girls, and strapped suicide bombs to terrified hostages.

The Nigerian military has made progress in the past weeks in chasing fighters from their forest hideouts, and this month the military secured the release of high-profile hostages — a group of female police officers and several university professors who had been held by the fighters.

Negotiations for the release of about 100 young women kidnapped from a school in Chibok in 2014 are still underway. Dozens of other Chibok girls have been released after similar negotiations or after escaping. Thousands of other residents from villages overrun by Boko Haram are also believed to be held in miserable conditions by the militants, who are known to conscript children into fighting.