Girls aged just 7 or 8 carry out suicide attack

TWO girls, thought to be only seven or eight years old, conducted a double suicide attack in a northeastern Nigerian market on Sunday, killing one person and wounding 18, officials said.

The attack in Maiduguri was not immediately claimed by Boko Haram but bore the hallmarks of the jihadist group, which often uses women or girls in such operations – especially in Borno state – the epicentre of their insurgency.

Borno state governor Kashim Shettima confirmed the toll to journalists while visiting victims in hospital.

The girls were “seven or eight”, a militia member in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno, Abdulkarim Jabo, told the media, recalling that he saw the girls immediately before the first explosion.

“They got out of a rickshaw and walked right in front of me without showing the slightest sign of emotion,” he said.

“I tried to speak with one of them in Hausa and in English, but she didn’t answer. She headed toward the poultry sellers, and then detonated her explosives belt,” he said.

The second explosion was apparently triggered slightly later as bystanders were helping the wounded.

“We removed 17 people with different degrees of injuries. The mutilated bodies of the two suicide bombers were also evacuated,” said Bello Dambatta of the local emergency management agency.

Boko Haram jihadists have laid waste to northeast Nigeria since they took up arms against the government in 2009. They are seeking to impose a hardline Islamic legal system on the country’s mainly-Muslim north.

At least 20 000 people have been killed and more than two-and-a-half million more displaced by the unrest.

On Friday at least 45 people died and 33 others were wounded in another double suicide attack carried out by female bombers, at a marketplace in the town of Madagali. — AFP