LAGOS: Boko Haram militants have attacked three villages in Nigeria, killing 48 people. One village is near the town of Chibok, where more than 300 schoolgirls were kidnapped last month.

The reports came from residents and were confirmed by a state intelligence agent who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to give information to reporters. The attacks happened between Tuesday night and early Wednesday.

Apagu Maidaga of Alagarno village said residents hid in the bush and watched while the militants set ablaze their homes of thatch-roofed mud huts.

“We saw our village up in flames. We hid in the bush waiting for the dawn; we lost everything,” he said.

Meanwhile, rescue workers on Wednesday combed through the rubble of Nigeria’s deadliest bomb attack after at least 118 people were killed in the central city of Jos, with Boko Haram blamed for the atrocity.

Emergency services picked through the burnt-out remains of vehicles and collapsed buildings in the New Abuja Market area of the city, where two car bombs exploded within 20 minutes of each other on Tuesday.

In Jos, where Boko Haram have attacked before, Plateau state governor Jonah Jang’s spokesman said the bombing bore the hallmarks of the rebels.

“This is not a Berom-Fulani attack,” Pam Ayuba told AFP, referring to the long-standing ethnic violence between Christian farmers and Muslim herdsmen that has claimed tens of thousands of lives in the region in the last two decades.

“The investigation is still ongoing but this is clearly an extension of the terrorist activity that has affected the northeast of the country, the Boko Haram insurgents.”

Kyari Mohammed, a Boko Haram specialist and chairman of the Center for Peace Studies at Modibbo Adama University in Yola, Adamawa state, also blamed the Boko Haram militants.

“They’re the only ones capable of doing this. Every other rebel or fringe group can use bombs but not of this scale or sophistication,” he said.

“I have the feeling that what they want to achieve is to escalate things because of the international pressure which has built up because of the kidnapping.”

On the day of the mass abduction, Boko Haram launched a car bomb attack on a bus station in a suburb of the capital Abuja which killed 75 and are suspected of a copy-cat attack in the same location on May 1 which left 19 dead.

Four people were killed in a suicide car bomb attack in the northern city of Kano on Sunday, although it was unclear whether the attack was linked to Boko Haram, despite the militants having attacked the city before.

Rescue workers were among those who were caught up in the Jos bombings.

As they tended to the injured from the first blast, the second detonated. Improvised explosive devices were hidden in a minibus and truck, the military said.