(CNN) — Nigeria may have a new president, but one thing hasn’t changed: the violent threat posed by Boko Haram.
The Islamist extremist group launched a rocket-propelled grenade attack on the Borno state capital of Maiduguri early Saturday, one day after Muhammadu Buhari was sworn in as the West African nation’s leader.
According to residents and military sources, the assault damaged to at least five homes and killed 13 people around 1:25 a.m. local time Saturday (8:25 p.m. ET Friday).
“Boko Haram kept shelling the area with RPGs,” said Hassan Buba, a local leader who detailed the death toll. “… Many people were also injured.”
Malam Yusuf says his wife is one of them, in the hospital after one of her feet was blown off after their home in Maiduguri’s Dala neighborhood was hit before dawn.
“It was deafening explosions all over, as volleys of RPGS were fired by Boko Haram from outside the city,” Yusuf said.
Residents of Borno state and other parts of northeastern Nigeria have been under fire from Boko Haram for years. The terror group has been behind numerous attacks, bombings and mass kidnappings — the most infamous being the 2014 abduction of more than 200 school girls in the town of Chibok.
Tackling this insurgency is one of the main tasks facing Buhari, who took over from Goodluck Jonathan in what was the first peaceful transfer of power between Nigeria’s rival parties since the end of military rule in 1999.
— CNN’s Greg Botelho reported and wrote from Atlanta, and journalist Aminu Abubakar reported from Nigeria.
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2015 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved.