Female Teenage Suicide Bomber Gets Cold Feet, Refuses To Detonate Bomb

 

Strapped with a booby-trapped vest and sent by Boko

Haram to kill as many people as possible, the young

teenage girl tore off the explosives and fled as soon as she

was out of sight of her handlers.

Her two companions, however, completed their grisly

mission and walked into a crowd of hundreds at Dikwa

refugee camp in northeast Nigeria and blew themselves

up, killing 58 people.

Later found by local self-defense forces, the girl’s tearful

account is one of the first indications that at least some of

the child bombers used by Boko Haram are aware that

they are about to die and kill others.

“She said she was scared because she knew she would kill

people, but she was also frightened of going against the

instructions of the men who brought her to the camp,”

said Modu Awami, a self-defense fighter who helped

question the girl”.

Her story was corroborated when she led soldiers to the

unexploded vest, Awami said Thursday by phone from the

refugee camp, which holds 50,000 people who have fled

Boko Haram’s Islamic uprising.

The girl is in custody and has given officials information

about other planned bombings that has helped them

increase security at the camp, Satomi Ahmed, chairman of

the Borno State Emergency Management Agency, told

reporters.

Awami said he had no information about how the girl

came to be with Boko Haram. The extremists have

kidnapped thousands of people and there are fears they

may be turning their captives into weapons.

An army bomb disposal expert has told the AP that some

suicide bombs are detonated remotely, so the carriers may

not have control over when the bomb goes off.

Even two days later, it’s difficult to say exactly how many

people died at Dikwa because there were corpses and body

parts everywhere, including in the cooking pots, Awami

said.

“Women, children, men and aged persons all died,” he

said by telephone. “I cannot say the exact number as some

cannot be counted because the bodies were all mangled.”