Nigerian president responds to bomb attacks

Two suicide bombers, who were girls ages 11 and 18, according to Kano State Police Commissioner Muhammad Musa Katsina, set off their bombs at around 4 p.m.in a mobile phone market amid the peak of trading.

Suicide-bomb attacks in the Nigerian cities of Yola and Kano Tuesday ought to serve as a reminder that the wholesale murder of innocents are being carried out all over.

In July past year, the city was hit four times in the space of a week by a spate of young female suicide bombers, whom experts say are unlikely to be willing participants to the attacks. In April 2015, Amnesty International released a report titled “Our job is to shoot, slaughter and kill”: Boko Haram’s reign of terror in north-east Nigeria.

Today’s attacks began with one in a bustling marketplace in the town of Yola, packed with refugees from Nigeria’s Islamic uprising. In March, Nigeria elected former military dictator Muhammadu Buhari its President after he promised to end Boko Haram’s reign of terror.

President Buhari urges all Nigerians not to despair in the face of cowardly terrorist attacks but to have confidence in the ability of the Nigerian Armed Forces to be reinvigorated, equipped, and motivated to overcome Boko Haram very soon. Boko Haram was responsible for 6,644 terrorism deaths and increased its activity by over 300 percent.

The Nigerian army, supported by troops from Chad, Niger and Cameroon, has been engaging Boko Haram militants in the northeast.

Although no group has yet claimed responsibility, Boko Haram is known to operate in the area and only yesterday a similar suicide attack that killed at least 32 people in the northern city of Yolo was staged.

In comparison, ISIS is believed to have killed 6,073 people in the same period.

The attack is thought to have been revenge for an earlier call by the Emir of Kano, a traditional leader, for citizens to take up arms against the Islamist militants. It found that Iraq was the country most impacted by terrorism – almost 10,000 people were killed by terrorist attacks in Iraq previous year, the most ever recorded in one country.