Female suicide bomber caught before she could blow up herself

The girl told security forces she was among the girls kidnapped in 2014 from their school in Nigeria by terror group Boko Haram

A suspected suicide bomber intercepted before she could blow herself up claimed to be one of 219 schoolgirls kidnapped by terrorists in 2014, military and local government sources said.


Two girls carrying explosives were stopped today by local defence forces in the village of Limani, in an area of northern Cameroon that has been the target of frequent suicide bombings in recent months.

They were then handed over to Cameroonian soldiers from a multi-national force set up to take on Nigerian Islamist terror group Boko Haram .

In a high-profile attack that sparked a global outcry, Boko Haram militants raided a school in the Nigerian town of Chibok in April 2014, while the girls were taking exams.

They loaded 270 of them onto trucks, though around 50 escaped shortly afterwards.

Local government administrator Raymond Roksdo said: “One of them indeed declared that she is one of the Chibok hostages . She is around 15.

“We are now verifying, because on the Nigerian side they have the names and photos of these girls.”
Read more: Three Boko Haram female suicide bombers kill 30 people in attack on bustling market.

Two military sources, who asked not to be identified as they were not authorised to speak to the media, also confirmed that the girl had claimed to have been one of the Chibok abductees.

“We need a few days to be able to confirm this information.

“We have to debrief all the men who were present and interrogate the two girls before we can say anything,” one of the military sources said.

Boko Haram has been responsible for attacks, massacres and kidnappings at schools and clinics in Nigeria as its members are fiercely against ‘Western’ education and immunisation programmes.

Former Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan was criticised for his slow reaction to the Chibok abductions, seen by many as indicative of his response to Boko Haram, which at its strongest held large swathes of north-eastern Nigeria.

Read more: Nigerian troops rescue 200 girls and 93 women after storming Boko Haram camps
It was nearly a month before a fact-finding committee travelled to Chibok to establish whether the abduction actually happened and how many girls were missing.

Muhammadu Buhari , who defeated Jonathan in an election last year, ordered a new investigation into the kidnappings in January.

Joint operations between Nigeria and its neighbours Niger, Chad and Cameroon succeeded in driving Boko Haram from many of its strongholds in Nigeria last year.

However, as an 8,700-strong regional task force seeks to stamp them out once and for all, the Islamists have stepped up cross-border attacks and suicide bombings, many of them carried out by young girls.