The Joint Task Force on Tuesday took over the security of the Baga Market in Maiduguri where a gunfight between the soldiers and suspected members of Boko Haram killed some 30 people on Monday.
Gunmen had, on Monday afternoon, stormed the market and sprayed vendors and customers with bullets, traders said.
The market opened on Tuesday but security forces shut all entry gates except one directly overlooking a police station.
“Most traders in this section of the market have not opened largely out of mourning for their colleagues killed in the attacks of yesterday (Monday). We have lost many colleagues,” Bunu Ahmad said on the phone.
Witnesses and medics said some 30 people died when gunmen opened fire and set off bombs inside the market, in what appeared to be a retaliatory attack for the arrest of a suspected Boko Haram member inside the market last week.
However, the military denied there were any civilian victims, saying it shot eight of the attackers.
Spokesman for the JTF, Lieutenant Colonel Hassan Mohammed, said the military “immediately came to the rescue of the situation and safely defused three bombs planted by members of the sect and shot and killed eight members of the sect”.
Some funerals of civilian victims of the attack took place on Tuesday.
One fish vendor, who asked not to be named said he lost two brothers in the attack. He said there was an explosion but he and his brothers chose not to run away at that stage.
“A few minutes after, one of my brothers shouted ‘Oh! they have killed me,’ then another one similarly shouted, ‘they have shot me’. That was when I fled,” he said shortly after burying the brothers aged 29 and 31.
Due to the emergency rule imposed on Maiduguri on December 31, only the military responds to any emergency situations in the city, but a relief agency source said from accounts given by witnesses, “the death toll from the attack is around 30.”
A nurse at Maiduguri hospital on Monday told AFP, “The number of dead could not be less than 30,” adding it was difficult to establish a precise death toll as security forces did not take the bodies to the morgue but allowed relatives to claim their loved ones for immediate burial.
