Nigerian suicide bomber gets cold feet, refuses to kill
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| Victims of a suicide bomb attack at a refugee camp receive treatment, at a hospital in Maiduguri, Nigeria, Wednesday, Feb. 10, 2016. Two female suicide bombers blew themselves up in a northeast Nigerian refugee camp, killing at least 56 people, health and rescue officials said Wednesday |
ABUJA,
Nigeria (AP) -- Strapped with a booby-trapped vest and sent by
the extremist Boko Haram group to kill as many people as possible, the
young teenage girl tore off the explosives and fled as soon as she was
out of sight of her handlers.
Her two
companions, however, completed their grisly mission and walked into a
crowd of hundreds at
Dikwa refugee camp in northeast Nigeria and blew
themselves up, killing 58 people.
Later found
by local self-defense forces, the girl's tearful account is one of the
first indications that at least some of the child bombers used by Boko
Haram are aware that 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 the camp," said Modu Awami, a self-defense fighter who
helped question the girl.
She was among
thousands held captive for months by the extremists, according to Algoni
Lawan, a spokesman for the Ngala local government area that has many
residents at the camp and who is privy to information about her
interrogation by security forces.
"She
confessed to our security operatives that she was worried if she went
ahead and carried out the attack that she might kill her own father, who
she knew was in the camp," he told the AP on Thursday.
The
girl tried to persuade her companions to abandon the mission, he said,
"but she said she could not convince the two others to change their
minds."
Her story was corroborated when she
led soldiers to the unexploded vest, Awami said Thursday, speaking by
phone from the 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
that has helped them increase security at the camp, said Satomi Ahmed,
chairman of the Borno State Emergency Management Agency.
The
United States on Thursday strongly condemned the bombings. State
Department spokesman Mark Toner said the U.S. remains committed to
assisting those afflicted by the conflict and supports efforts to
provide greater protection for civilians and the regional fight against
terrorism.
Boko Haram's 6-year-old Islamic
insurgency has killed 20,000 people, made 2.5 million homeless and
spread across Nigeria's borders.
The
extremists have kidnapped thousands of people and the increasing number
of suicide bombings by girls and children have raised fears they are
turning some captives into weapons. An army bomb disposal expert has
told the AP that some suicide bombs are detonated remotely, so the
carriers may not have control over when the bomb goes off.
Even
two days later, 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. "I cannot say the
exact number as some cannot be counted because the bodies were all
mangled."
The latest atrocity blamed on Boko
Haram extremists was committed against people who had been driven from
the homes by the insurgents and had spent a year across the border in
Cameroon.
Some 12,000 of them had only
returned to Nigeria in January when soldiers declared the area safe. The
scene of the killings is 50 kilometers (30 miles) from the border with
Cameroon and 85 kilometers (53 miles) northeast of Maiduguri, the
biggest city in the northeast and birthplace of Boko Haram.
Such
attacks make it difficult for the government to persuade people to
return home. The extremists have also razed homes and businesses,
destroyed wells and boreholes and stolen livestock and seed grains that
farmers need to start their life again.
