Girl, 10, caught with suicide belt

01 August 2014 - 02:06 By © The Daily Telegraph
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A 10-year-old girl strapped with a suicide bomber's explosives belt has been taken into police custody alongside her 18-year-old sister in northern Nigeria, police said.

Their arrest on Wednesday came shortly before another female suicide attacker blew herself up at a higher education college in the city of Kano, killing six people, in the fourth such attack using women in a week.

Security sources suspect that Boko Haram, Nigeria's al-Qaeda-linked Islamist insurgents, has shifted its tactics to using women and girls, either indoctrinated by male relatives or forced to carry out attacks against their will.

The 10-year-old and her sister, Zainab Musa, 18, were being driven by a man in his 20s late in the evening in Funtua town, west of Kano, when they were stopped at a police roadblock and ordered out of their Honda hatchback.

"They were asked to alight but when they got down, officers saw that the youngest one was strapped with explosives on a vest she was wearing," government spokesman Mike Omeri said.

"The girl did not offer resistance and she was stopped and her vest was demobilised. We have not yet forensically investigated it, but it was prepared and would have caused havoc.

"The older girl and the man tried to escape but they were cut off by ordinary citizens and arrested. We are questioning them."

Using female suicide bombers appears to be a new tactic of Boko Haram in Kano, although the group has used them on occasion for years further north in Nigeria.

Two female suicide bombers blew themselves up at a trade show and a petrol station in Kano on Monday, killing one other person and injuring at least six others.

On Sunday, a female suicide bomber killed herself but no one else while trying to target police officers.

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