A female suicide bomber killed herself and 19 other people at a market in northeastern Nigeria’s largest city on Saturday, capping
a week of attacks in the region.
The woman walked into the Monday Market in Maiduguri around 1 p.m. local time, said Mohammed Adamu, a member of a vigilante group that had been trying to screen potential bombers from entering the market, which had been bombed last month, killing five people.
As Mr. Adamu’s fellow vigilantes stopped the woman, the bomb exploded, killing several vigilantes, he said. Within hours, more vigilantes had swept into the market, cordoning off the area and telling reporters they were willing to die fighting Boko Haram. Police spokesman Gideon Jibrin confirmed the incident.
A reporter who saw the body estimated the bomber’s age in her early 20s. Other witnesses put her age around 15.
The attack came as a separate bomb struck the town of Potiskum, about 150 miles west of Maiduguri. That blast killed two police officers who had stopped and commandeered a suspicious vehicle that then exploded, said Police Commissioner Markus Danladi.
Boko Haram, which aims to cast Africa’s most populous country
into fundamentalist Islamic law, has carried out a spree of attacks in the past week that have killed a still-unspecified number of people. Officials estimated that at least several hundred people had died in a six-day shooting spree in and around the town of Baga, alone.
On Friday night, Boko Haram fighters drove into Damaturu, the capital of northeastern Nigeria’s Yobe state. But the military was able to push them back, soldiers and officers said. “Many of our soldiers sustained gunshot injuries,” said one officer, who wasn’t authorized to be identified by name.
More than 8,000 people have fled the area in the past week, with about 1,000 people stranded on an island in Lake Chad, the United Nations said on Friday. About 1.6 million people in all have
left their homes in northeastern Nigeria to escape Boko Haram, the U.N. added.
“These attacks will not deter the Nigeria Military,” said Brig. Gen. Chris Olukolade.
