BEVERLY HILLS, February 12, (THEWILL) – A young teenage girl strapped with a booby-trapped vest and sent by the extremist Boko Haram group to kill as many people as possible in a suicide attack refused to kill but tore off the explosives and fled as soon as she was out of sight of her handlers.
She was among thousands held captive for months by the extremists, according to Algoni Lawan, a spokesman for the Ngala local government area that has many residents at the camp, and who is privy to information about her interrogation by security forces.
“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.
“She confessed to our security operatives that she was worried if she went ahead and carried out the attack that she might kill her own father, who she knew was in the camp,” he told the AP on Thursday.
The girl tried to persuade her companions to abandon the mission, he said, “but she said she could not convince the two others to change their minds.”
Her two companions, however, completed their mission and walked into a crowd of hundreds at Dikwa refugee camp in northeast Nigeria and blew themselves up, killing 58 people.
Her story was corroborated when she led soldiers to the unexploded vest, Awami said, speaking by phone from the refugee camp, which holds 50,000 people who have fled Boko Haram’s Islamic uprising.
Satomi Ahmed, Chairman of the Borno State Emergency Management Agency, revealed that the girl is in custody and has given officials information about other planned bombings that has helped them increase security at the camp, said
Boko Haram’s 6-year-old Islamic insurgency has killed 20,000 people, made 2.5 million homeless and spread across Nigeria’s borders.
The extremists have kidnapped thousands of people and the increasing number of suicide bombings by girls and children have raised fears they are turning some captives into weapons.
Story by David Oputah
