Boko Haram sends more girl bombers
Greater number this year than all of 2016, report finds, as embassies plot is foiled
DAKAR, SENEGAL // Boko Haram militants are increasingly forcing children to carry out bombings, with the number of attacks since January nearly reaching the total for last year, a report by the UN children’s agency said yesterday.
The report was published the same day Nigerian security officials revealed they thwarted plans by the ISIL-linked group to attack the embassies of the U S and Britain in the capital Abuja.
Unicef has said at least 117 attacks have been carried out by youths in the Lake Chad basin region since 2014, with nearly 80 per cent of the bombs strapped to girls who were sometimes drugged before their missions.
The very sight of children near marketplaces and checkpoints is causing alarm, said Marie-Pierre Poirier, Unicef’s regional director for West and Central Africa.
As a result, nearly 1,500 children were detained last year across Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger and Chad.
“These children are victims, not perpetrators,” Ms Poirier said.
“Forcing or deceiving them into committing such horrific acts is reprehensible.”
Yesterday, the department of state services said it arrested five suspected members of Boko Haram based in Benue state between March 25 and 26. “The group had perfected plans to attack the UK and US embassies and other western interests in Abuja,” said state services.
The DSS said another suspected Boko Haram member, arrest- ed on March 22 in north-eastern Yobe state, confessed to the plot. The British high commission and US embassy in Abuja did not answer requests for comment. Boko Haram has killed more than 20,000 people and forced more than 2 million to flee their homes since 2009 in an insurgency aimed at creating an Islamic state in the north-east of Africa’s most populous nation.
This week marks the third anniversary of the mass abduction of Chibok schoolgirls by Boko Haram, which has pledged allegiance to ISIL.
The abduction of 276 girls from a boarding school in Nigeria on April 14, 2014 mobilised an international campaign to find and free the girls, many of whom were forced into marriages with fighters.
Dozens escaped, and 21 were freed in October through negotiations.
The government denied a ransom was paid and that it freed some detained Boko Haram fighters in exchange for the girls.
At that time, officials said they expected the release of a second group but no more have been freed.
Yesterday, Unicef emphasised that beyond the Chibok abductions, the practice of kidnapping children and forcing them to associate with the armed group has been prevalent.
The agency also called for the community reintegration of children who were once under Boko Haram’s control.
But a US$154 million (Dh565.5m) appeal last year for the Lake Chad region remains only 40 per cent funded, it said.