Police bomb squad personnel gather debris for analysis at the scene of a bomb blast in Nyanya, on the outskirts of Abuja.

Militants claiming loyalty to ISIS said they were behind suicide bombings near the Nigerian capital Abuja which killed at least 15 people, a statement on Twitter said on Sunday.

On Friday, suicide bombers attacked two suburbs of Abuja.

President Muhammadu Buhari had blamed Boko Haram, which has waged a six-year campaign to carve out an Islamist state in northern Nigeria, for the Abuja attack.

But militants claiming loyalty to ISIS said they had conducted the suicide bombings, according to the statement. The authenticity of the statement, which did not mention Boko Haram and was issued under the name ‘Islamic State West Africa’, could not be verified.

It named three suicide bombers who it said were behind the attacks, the statement said.

In May, the leader of the ISIS militant group that controls parts of Syria and Iraq accepted a pledge of allegiance from Boko Haram, according to his spokesman.

But the extent of cooperation between the two groups is not known.