Bomb blasts have killed at least 50 people in Maiduguri, capital of Borno State, in Nigeria’s troubled North-East.

There was no immediate claim for the bombings but they bore the hallmarks of the Islamist group Boko Haram, which has been waging a six-year insurgency to carve out an Islamic state in Africa’s biggest economy.

Around noon today, a tricycle rider detonated a bomb when they were prevented from entering a fish market on the Baga road in the west of Maiduguri, Mohammad Ajia, a trader at the market said after fleeing the scene.

A second blast hit an area known as the Monday market shortly afterwards before a car bomb exploded by a bus station near a Department of State Security (DSS) office, according to a civilian member of a joint task force.

“We’ve received 50 dead bodies from the blast scenes and 36 injured people,” Salisu Kwaya Bura, Chief Medical Officer of Borno Specialists Hospital, told reporters.

The number of wounded was well above 36 as more had been taken to two other hospitals, a hospital source said.

“Men from the anti-bomb squad came a few minutes after the blast to comb the scene ... I saw five mangled bodies being put in vehicles,” Aliyu Musa, a resident near the DSS office, said.

Maiduguri is the capital of Borno state and birthplace of Boko Haram, which has long coveted the city as a capital for the state it wants to create. The militants tried to seize Maiduguri at the end of January and again in early February.

•Adapted from a Reuters report.