Nigeria’s militant group Boko Haram is reported to have killed more than 30 people in Gubio, Borno state in North Eastern Nigeria.
Military sources said the attack which happened over the weekend lasted for 5 hours after the militants stormed a village killing residents.
Meanwhile a UN report says that there has been an increase in the number of suicide attacks in Nigeria.
The number of reported suicide attacks has jumped to 27 in the first five months of this year compared to 26 for all of last year said the UN report.
It’s not known how many thousands of boys, girls and women have been kidnapped by Boko Haram but new abductions are being reported every week.
UNICEF said it estimates that 743,000 children have been uprooted by the nearly 6-year-old Islamic uprising, with as many as 10,000 separated from their families in the chaos.
Three-quarters of the attacks were carried out by female bombers, some as young as seven, it added.
Sources say that the group is resorting to suicide attacks as a result of having lost a lot of ground to the army.
Unicef said it did not believe that the girls carried out the bombings willingly.
“Children are not instigating these suicide attacks; they are used intentionally by adults in the most horrific way,” it said. “They are first and foremost victims – not perpetrators.”
Boko Haram has abducted women and girls it its latest terror activities in Nigeria.
Boko Haram has been driven out of nearly all the territory it captured by a series of offensives waged by Nigeria’s armed forces backed by soldiers from the neighbouring states of Chad, Niger and Cameroon in the past few months.
Thousands of people have been killed and several million displaced in a six-year Boko Haram campaign in Nigeria’s northeast to set up a state ruled by Islamic law.
Many of Boko Haram’s members are said to have retreated into northeastern Nigeria’s Sambisa forest.
