WUNRN
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-30761963
NIGERIA – YOUNG GIRL SUICIDE
BOMBER KILLS 19 PEOPLE IN NE NIGERIA TOWN MARKET
10
January 2015 - At least 19 people have been killed and several injured by a
bomb strapped to a girl reported to be about age 10 in north-eastern Nigeria,
police say.
The
bomb exploded in a market in the city of Maiduguri, in Borno state.
"The
explosive devices were wrapped around her body," a police source told
Reuters.
No
group has said it carried out the attack. The market is reported to have been
targeted twice in a week by female bombers late last year.
Correspondents
say that all the signs point to the militant Islamist Boko Haram group.
They
have been fighting to establish an Islamic caliphate in the north-eastern
states of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa, which have borne the worst violence in their
five year insurgency.
Borno
State police spokesman Gideon Jubrin said that the girl bomber let off an
improvised explosive device near the area of the Maiduguri market where
chickens were sold.
The
BBC's Abdulahi Kaura in Lagos says that this will not be the first suicide bombing
involving young girls, part of a new militant strategy intended to capitalise
on the fact that people in the Muslim-dominated north are less suspicious of
women.
In
other violence reported on Saturday a vehicle in Yobe state exploded at a
checkpoint near a police station, killing at least two people.
The
blast follows heavy fighting in the Yobe state capital Damaturu on Friday
night, with buildings destroyed and civilian casualties reported.
The town of Baga has also been
regularly attacked by militants
Hundreds
of people were killed on Wednesday in an assault by Boko Haram on the town of
Baga, following on their seizure of a key military base there on 3 January,
Scores
of bodies from that attack - described by Amnesty International as possibly the
"deadliest massacre" in the history of Boko Haram -
are reported to remain strewn in the bush.
District
head Baba Abba Hassan said most victims in the Baga attack were children, women
or elderly people who were not able to escape when insurgents forced their way
into the town by firing rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles.
Boko
Haram has taken control of many towns and villages in north-eastern Nigeria
over the past year.
The
conflict has displaced at least 1.5 million people, while more than 2,000 were
killed last year.