Nigerian troops battled Boko Haram suicide bombers and fighters to repel an attack on the outskirts of northeastern Maiduguri city, witnesses and soldiers say 11 people have been killed.
Associated Press reports that nine suicide bombers and two civilians died early Friday.
It was the fiercest attack in months by Boko Haram on the city that is the birthplace of the Islamic insurgency.
Police say three female suicide bombers detonated vehicles parked at a truck station around midnight. The two civilians died there.
Self-defense fighters say soldiers later fired at gunmen on motorcycles escorting suicide bombers, killing at least six of the bombers.
Nigerian troops last year drove the Boko Haram insurgents from northeastern towns, but isolated attacks and suicide bombings continue.
The seven-year Islamic uprising has killed more than 20,000 people.
Boko Haram is an Islamic extremist group based in northeastern Nigeria but they are also active in Chad, Niger and northern Cameroon.
The group was led by Abubakar Shekau until August 2016, when he was succeeded by Abu Musab al-Barnawi.
The group had alleged links to al-Qaeda, but in March 2015, it announced its allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
Since the current insurgency started in 2009, it has killed 20,000 and displaced 2.3 million from their homes and was ranked as the world’s deadliest terror group by the Global Terrorism Index in 2015.
After its founding in 2002, Boko Haram’s increasing radicalization led to a violent uprising in July 2009 in which its leader was summarily executed.
Its unexpected resurgence, following a mass prison break in September 2010, was accompanied by increasingly sophisticated attacks, initially against soft targets, and progressing in 2011 to include suicide bombings of police buildings and the United Nations office in Abuja.
The government’s establishment of a state of emergency at the beginning of 2012, extended in the following year to cover the entire northeast of Nigeria, led to an increase in both security force abuses and militant attacks.
