Nigerian crowd beats to death teenage girl accused of being suicide bomber

The logo of Boko Haram on the cracked windscreen of an armoured vehicle. The extremist group has been blamed for a spate of suicide bombing in the north of Nigeria. Photograph: Reuters

Sunday, March 1, 2015

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A crowd has beaten to death a teenage girl accused of planning to be a suicide bomber and then set her body on fire, according to police and witnesses at a north-eastern Nigerian market.

A second suspect, also a teenage girl, was arrested at Muda Lawal, the biggest market in Bauchi city.

A spate of suicide bombings has been blamed on the Boko Haram Islamic extremist group, which wants to enforce strict Islamic law across Nigeria. The group has threatened to disrupt Nigeria’s 28 March presidential and legislative elections, saying democracy is a corrupt western concept.

In Bauchi, the two girls aroused suspicion by refusing to be searched when they arrived at the gate to the vegetable market, said yam seller Mohd Adamu. People overpowered one girl and discovered she had two bottles strapped to her body, he said. They clubbed her to death, put a tire doused in fuel over her head and set it on fire, he said.

It seems doubtful the girl was actually a bomber as she did not detonate any explosives when she was attacked, said Police deputy superintendent Mohammad Haruna. He said she was the victim of mob action carried out by an irate crowd.

Recently some girls as young as 10 years old have been used to carry explosives that detonated in busy markets and bus stations, raising fears that Boko Haram may be using some of its hundreds of kidnap victims in bomb attacks. It’s unclear whether such girls detonate explosives themselves or whether the bombs are controlled remotely.

President Goodluck Jonathan last week condemned the extremists for choosing soft targets and said the series of bombings were a response to the Nigerian military’s recent success in seizing back several towns that had been in the hands of the group for months.

A multinational military force including Nigeria’s neighbours is being formed to stop Boko Haram’s attacks outside Nigeria’s borders.

About 10,000 people died in Nigeria from Boko Haram’s violence last year, compared to 2,000 in the first four years, according to the US Council on Foreign Relations, which said 1.5 million people had been driven from their homes.

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