Teenage girl takes off explosive vest, flees

• Strapped with a booby- t rapped vest and sent by Boko Haram to kill as many people as possible, the teenage girl tore off the explosives and fled as soon as she was out of sight of her handlers.

Her two companions completed their grisly mission and walked into a crowd of hundreds at Dikwa refugee camp in northeast Nigeria on Tuesday and blew themselves up, killing 58 people.

The tearful account of the girl, who was later found by self- defence forces, is one of the first indications at least some of the child bombers used by Boko Haram know they are about to die and kill others.

“She said she was scared because she knew she would kill people, but she was also frightened of going against the instructions of the men who brought her to t he camp,” said Modu Awami, a self- defence fighter who helped question the girl.

Her story was corrobor- ated when she led soldiers to the unexploded vest, Awami said Thursday f rom t he refugee camp, which holds 50,000 people who have fled Boko Haram’s Islamic uprising.

The girl is in custody and has given officials information about other planned bombings, s ai d Satomi Ahmed, chairman of the Borno State Emergency Management Agency.

Awami said he had no information about how the girl came to be with Boko Haram. The extremists have kidnapped thousands of people and may be turning their captives into weapons.

An army bomb disposal expert said some suicide bombs are detonated remotely, taking control out of the hands of the carriers.

It’s difficult to say exactly how many people died at Dikwa because there were corpses and body parts everywhere, including in the cooking pots, Awami said.

“Women, children, men and aged persons all died,” he said by telephone. “I cannot say the exact number as some cannot be counted because the bodies were all mangled.”