Boko Haram Uses Female Bombers to Kill More Than 80 Nigerians

At least 48 people were killed in suicide attacks and bombings on Monday in two cities in northern Nigeria where the jihadist Boko Haram group is waging a six-year campaign to create an Islamic state, officials and residents said.

In Maiduguri, the capital of neighbouring Borno state, at least 30 people were killed and more than 90 wounded in overnight explosions and shootouts, and another 20 died in a bombing outside a mosque at dawn on Monday, according to Muhammed Kanar, the area coordinator for Nigeria’s national emergency management agency.

According to him, “One of them (suicide bombers) went to a nearby house and requested for water to perform ablution but instead prepared herself and came to a nearby mosque and blew off herself killing one person while 13 others were injured”.

An eye witness account revealed that the suicide bombers detonated bombs at a garage in Madagali town near a mini market at 9am on Monday.

Nigerian troops have won back territory from Boko Haram, but two attacks launched by the militants within the space of three days have called into question Buhari’s claim.

Since Buhari took office in May, the military has made significant headway in curbing the insurgency, and pushing the Islamist group – under the name Islamic State in West Africa Province – further into Nigeria’s Sambisa Forest.

Boko Haram has been warring against the Nigerian government for nearly six years, killing over 20,000 people in acts of terror such as village raids, shootings and suicide bombings.

“Just as I said in my meeting with the newspapers editors in Lagos on the 21st of December, the military has largely met the deadline to defeat Boko Haram, and the military has matched the capacity of terrorists to carry out the attacks they used to”, he said on Channel Television’s Sunrise Daily.

At least 14 people were killed, dozens injured and an entire village burned down in an attack perpetrated on Christmas day by Boko Haram insurgents in Borno State.

“The United States will continue working with our partners in the region to identify new opportunities to support their efforts to stop Boko Haram’s wanton violence and restore order in the Lake Chad Basin region”.

Abubakar, who was represented by Maj.-General Lamidi Adeosun, the GOC, 7 Division, said that the bombers were successfully intercepted by men of the Nigerian Army on patrol.

Other wounded people had to be sent to other hospitals in the city.

Musa Abdukadir, a resident, said he had counted more than 50 bodies in the hospital after the blast. A local reported that in the ensuing gun fight between government soldiers and the insurgents, a woman detonated herself amid fleeing people.