A man claiming to be a spokesman for Nigeria's extremist sect Boko Haram said Tuesday that the group was behind an attack that claimed about 30 lives in a crowded market.
A group of gunmen stormed the Baga market in the northeastern city of Maiduguri on Monday, setting off home-made bombs and shooting at stallholders and vendors, according to surviving traders.
"We were behind the Baga market attack of yesterday," a man calling himself Abul Qaqa, the sect's purported spokesman, told reporters in a conference call.
Witnesses and a medic said some 30 people were killed in the lunchtime attack in the flashpoint city which is also the home base of the sect, a group blamed for a wave of increasingly deadly attacks in Nigeria.
The military denied any civilians died in the assault but said that it had killed eight of the attackers.
But Abul Qaqa said: "None of our members were killed there.
"From all indications, security agencies and hospitals are concealing vital information."
The market opened on Tuesday amid tight security, but many stay away.
Abul Qaqa said the attack was aimed at specific traders who helped arrest a Boko Haram member and handed him over to the military last week.
"We want to assure traders that we have no business with them. We have succeeded in tracking down the traders that worked against us. People should go about their normal life without any fear."
Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state, has seen some of the worst violence blamed on the extremist sect, which has focused its attacks on the mainly Muslim north of Africa's most populous country.
