At least 70 people have been killed during an attack by Boko Haram armed group in northeast Nigeria.

The blast took place in the country's northeastern city of Maiduguri on Saturday, Al Jazeera's Ahmed Idris said, reporting from Abuja.

"Over the last few weeks ... we've seen the attacks reduce on the Nigerian side, and we've seen how Boko Haram has been increasingly using suicide bombers on the Cameroon side," our correspondent said.

A Nigerian military spokesman, Colonel Mustapha Ankas, said that Boko Haram fighters attacked the community of Dalori, about 5 km east of Maiduguri, on Saturday evening.

Boko Haram group has also carried out deadly cross-border raids in neighbouring Chad, Cameroon and Niger.

The armed group has carried out an uprising that killed 20,000 people in six years and driven 2.3 million people from their homes.

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) says that up to one million children have been forced out of school as a result of the instability.

Al Jazeera