Five killed in Nigeria market blasts

At least five people were killed and 21 others injured when two explosions ripped through a market in northeastern Nigeria Sunday, security officials said.

The blasts struck within minutes of each other at a crowded mobile phone market in the town of Potiskum in northeastern Nigeria's Yobe state, according to a Voice of America report.

The blasts came a day after a female suicide bomber blew herself up at a crowded market in the city of Maiduguri, in northeastern Nigeria's Borno state, killing at least 19 people and injuring 20 others. According to some accounts, at least 20 bodies were found in the area.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, but Maiduguri -- the capital of the Borno state -- lies in the heartland of an insurgency by the Islamist militant group Boko Haram.

Also Saturday, a car bomb exploded outside a police station in the Potiskum town, killing two people.

The latest attacks in Potiskum came a week after Boko Haram militants seized control of the town of Baga in the Borno state after intense battles with Nigerian soldiers.

Officials said that the militants burned down much of Baga and the villages surrounding the town, prompting thousands of people to flee to Maiduguri or to islands in Lake Chad.

Estimates of the number of civilians killed in the past week range from several hundred up to 2,000.

Over 10,000 people were killed last year alone in Boko Haram violence, according to the Washington-based Council on Foreign Relations.

More than a million people are displaced inside Nigeria and hundreds of thousands have fled across its borders into Chad and Cameroon.

The name Boko Haram, translated from the local dialect, means "non-Islamic education is a sin".

The group seeks to enshrine the Islamic Sharia law in the constitution of Nigeria and has been a major security threat in Africa's most populous country since 2009.