BOKO HARAM:

Terrorists using more children as suicide bombers.

In the last two years, Boko Haram militants have increasingly turned to a new tactic in West Africa: child suicide bombers.

The number of children involved in such blasts grew tenfold, from four in 2014 to 44 in 2015, according to a report released by the U.N. children’s agency on Tuesday. And more than three-quarters of the children are girls, some as young as 8 years old.

The accounts by UNICEF add another chilling view of the atrocities blamed on the Boko Haram group, which has conducted mass kidnappings of children, including more than 200 school girls abducted from a boarding school in northern Nigeria two years ago. Some girls and women who escaped have claimed that captives face sexual abuse and forced marriages.

“Let us be clear: these children are victims, not perpetrators,” said Manuel Fontaine, UNICEF’s regional director for West and Central Africa, in a statement. “Deceiving children and forcing them to carry out deadly acts has been one of the most horrific aspects of the violence in Nigeria and in neighboring countries.”

Security forces in Nigeria, Cameroon and Chad have forced the Islamist group from most of the territory it once controlled. In response, Boko Haram has conducted a growing number of attacks on civilian targets, killing hundreds of people in recent months.

The report also reflects Boko Haram’s push in recent years outside its former strongholds in northern Nigeria. Nearly half the child suicide attacks, 21, were in neighboring Cameroon, it said.

According to UNICEF, many of the attacks involuntary.

“Boys are forced to attack their own families to demonstrate their loyalty to Boko Haram,” the report said.

In a separate report from Human Rights Watch released Tuesday, researchers said that “Nigeria’s security forces have contributed to the problem by using schools as military bases, putting children at further risk of attack from the Islamist armed group.”

Human Rights Watch also reported that “at least 611 teachers have been deliberately killed.”

Nearly 1.3 million schoolchildren have been displaced by the conflict, according to UNICEF.

ASSOCIATED PRESS FILES Zahra’u Babangida, a 13-year-old girl, was arrested on Dec. 24, 2015, with explosives strapped to her body in Kano Nigeria. The number of child bombers used by the Islamic extremists of Boko Haram has increased tenfold in a year, UNICEF reported Tuesday.