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A YOUNG GIRL died while reportedly carrying explosives that also killed five others in an attack on a market in the northeastern Nigerian city of Potiskum.
Nineteen others who sustained various degrees of injury were taken to hospital after the blast, a local vigilante leader told AFP.
“So far, five people were killed with the girl while 19 others have been taken to hospital for injuries,” Buba Lawan said.
A hospital source speaking on condition of anonymity confirmed the toll. The attack occurred at around 1.30pm (12.30pm GMT) during peak hours of business, traders said.
As young as seven
Witnesses said she appeared to be as young as seven years old and was the latest in a string of child “suicide” bombers in Nigeria. Previous such attacks have been blamed on Islamist extremist group Boko Haram.
The attack again highlighted the severe security challenges facing Nigeria in the run-up to March 28 presidential and parliamentary elections.
Today’s incident was the second such “suicide” attack around the same market, where new and second-hand phones are sold and repaired.
The first attack occurred January 11, when two bombers, one of them appearing to be around 15 years old, blew themselves up outside the market. The attack killed six and injured 37 others.
Barring women
In today’s attack, suspicious security guards and vigilantes said they had sought to prevent the girl from entering the market.
“We sent her back four times, because given her age, she did not have anything to do in the market,” Lawan said.
When we were screening people, she bent and tried to pass under the ropes, some distance from our view. That was when the explosives went off.
In a sign of how much distrust has been generated over the suicide bombings, Lawan said that “since the January suicide bomb attacks, we have barred women from entering the market to prevent further attacks.”
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If the coronavirus hadn’t taken over Brexit is all we’d have been hearing about for the past 3 months……. I’m well aware of the importance of both but I’m sick of Brextit and Covod 19.
@Dec:
Well – As Leon T said:
“You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you”
@Michael Kavanagh: A Trotsky quote to make a point re the advancement of capitalism…. however unlikely it may be it’s an excellent quote and very apt in this instance! It’s the reason we keep reading and commenting on Brexit and other such articles even when we’re completely disillusioned with them all!
‘The Duchy of Lancaster’…..God what is it with these people.
It just showed how much the readers of the journal are interested in brexit, this storey is up 2 hours and only 2 post about it. I got bord after the scend line .
@Heisen thing is there is nothing to comment on
“…which was illuminating in showing how little we still don’t know.”
Do you even read what you write?
Boris the Bluffer and his cronies have shown themselves up ti be as useless as most people outside the UK saw them to be.
1000 people a day dying from Covis-19 but they only count hospital deaths! It keeps the numbers low.
All the lies they told about Brexit are being shown as that
@Gary Kearney: there are not a thousand dying each day check worlometers
When the boy cried wolf he gained a reputation. British Perfidy has been around for hundreds of years. Indeed Stalin refused to believe the British when they warned him of imminent German onslaught. He thought they were lying. That’s what reputation does.
Embarrassing shambles, the entire affair. Full of lies and some misplaced Empire nostalgia nonsense. Johnson is a pathological liar and unfit to be the prime minister.
have your say