Boko Haram girl suicide bombers often unaware

‘Probe massacre in Nigeria’

GENEVA, Dec 17, (Agencies): Many of the young girls Boko Haram sends out as suicide bombers in Nigeria and neighbouring countries are probably unaware that they will be blown up, a UN expert said Tuesday.

Boko Haram jihadists have in recent months increasingly used young women and girls as suicide bombers in northeast Nigeria, northern Cameroon, Chad and Niger, leaving death and destruction in their wake.

Leila Zerrougui, the UN secretary-general’s special representative on children and armed conflict, suggested Tuesday that especially the children used in this way were in many cases not aware of what they were about to do.

“Many of them don’t know that they will be blown up with remote devices,” she told reporters, pointing out many of the girls are as young as 11 or 12.

“I personally doubt that the children know,” Zerrougui said, adding that security forces had informed the UN that the bombs are often set off remotely.

“That means that it is not the person herself who did it,” she said.

Zerrougui lamented that the use of children as human bombs is one of the worst manifestations of an increasingly blatant disregard for the safety and security of minors in conflict situations around the world.

Zerrougui

Shields

Elsewhere, thousands of youngsters are used as soldiers and children as young as four or five are being used as human shields on battlefields by armed groups like the Islamic State or the anti-Balaka in the Central African Republic, she said.

“This is the worst form where children are really put in danger and their bodies are really used as a weapon,” she insisted.

Zerrougui said that since she was appointed to her position in 2012, she has each year decried an increasingly dire situation for children caught up in conflicts, “and every year (it gets) even worse.” And 2015 was no exception. “I can say that 2015 was really a difficult year for children all over the world where conflicts are ongoing,” she said.

The world is currently dealing with six major conflicts, including in Syria and Yemen, compared to one or two normally.

And if you count protracted conflicts, a jaw-dropping 20 are currently impacting the lives of children around the world, she said.

“We have thousands of children killed, maimed, schools attacked and children by the thousands recruited in many places,” she said.

“Children are not only affected, they are specifically targeted.”

Meanwhile, Human rights advocates have called for an investigation following the Nigerian army’s raid on a Shiite sect in which hundreds of people were reportedly killed.

Weekend

Details of the weekend violence in Zaria have been slow to emerge, with the three attacked areas of the northern town on lockdown as late as Tuesday, with no one allowed to enter or leave.

Amnesty International said in a statement late Tuesday that the shooting of members of the Shiite group in Zaria “must be urgently investigated ... and anyone found responsible for unlawful killings must be brought to justice.”

“Whilst the final death toll is unclear, there is no doubt of that there has been a substantial loss of life at the hands of the military,” said M.K. Ibrahim, director of Amnesty International, Nigeria.

The bloodshed was yet another blow to Africa’s most populous nation, already beset by a 6-year-old insurgency waged by Boko Haram, a violent Islamic group which is at odds with the Shiites and others who oppose its extremist views.

Spokesman Ibrahim Musa of the Shiite Islamic Movement in Nigeria said soldiers on Monday carried away about 200 bodies from around the home of the head of the sect, Ibraheem Zakzaky — who was himself badly wounded and whose whereabouts have not been disclosed by the authorities — and hundreds more corpses were in the mortuary. Human rights activists said hundreds of people, perhaps as many as 1,000, were killed.

The army said troops attacked sites in Zaria after 500 Shiites blocked the convoy of Nigeria’s army chief, and tried to kill him on Saturday. A report from the military police said some Shiites were crawling through tall grass toward Gen. Tukur Buratai’s vehicle “with the intent to attack the vehicle with (a) petrol bomb” while others “suddenly resorted to firing gunshots from the direction of the mosque.”

In a statement Monday, the army said there was “loss of lives as a result of the Shiite group members blocking roads and not allowing other passersby to go about their lawful businesses and activities,” and added that “as soon as order is restored ... the police will conduct an enquiry and the public will be informed.”