Ten people were killed at a market in northeast Nigeria when a girl believed to be just 12 years of age, detonated explosives she was carrying.
The girl blew herself up in a market in northeast Nigeria’s insurgency-plagued Yobe state, residents and medics said.
A relative of one of the injured victims and a health worker confirmed the incident.
The blast happened at about 11:00 am (local time) on Tuesday at the weekly market in Wagir, in the Gujba district south of the Yobe state capital Damaturu.
Yobe state has repeatedly come under attack by Boko Haram militants although the group has not claimed responsibility for the attack.
“It was a suicide attack by a girl of around 12 years,” Hussaini Aisami, whose relative was among at least 30 people injured by the blast, told AFP.
She went into the market and headed straight to the grain section. She detonated her explosives in the middle of traders and customers. Ten people died from the explosion. We brought 30 people to the hospital.”
Tuesday’s attack bore all the hallmarks of Boko Haram Islamists, who have used young women and girls in the past as human bombs and regularly attacked “soft” civilian targets such as markets.
The Group kidnapped more than 200 hundred girls in 2014 causing outrage around the world as activists blamed that Nigerian government for not doing enough to deal with the group.
On Monday, a girl thought to be aged about 17 killed at least 20 at a bus station near a fish market in the Borno state capital, Maiduguri, when the explosives she was carrying went off.
A girl about the same age was also killed nearby when she blew up but there were no other casualties. Security analysts studying the phenomenon have suggested that younger girls may have their explosives detonated remotely by a third party.
Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state, has increasingly come under attack in the weeks since new President Muhammadu Buhari took office on May 29, vowing to wipe out the Islamists.
