Bauchi — A crowd beat to death a teenage girl
accused of being a suicide bomber and then set
her body ablaze Sunday, according to police
and witnesses at a Bauchi market.
A second suspect, also a teenage girl, was
arrested at Muda Lawal, the biggest market in
Bauchi city.
A spate of suicide bombings has been blamed
on Boko Haram. The group has threatened to
disrupt Nigeria's March 28 presidential and
legislative elections, saying democracy is a
corrupt Western concept.
In Bauchi, the two girls aroused suspicion by
refusing to be searched when they arrived at the
gate to the vegetable market, said yam vendor
Mohd Adamu. People overpowered one girl and
discovered she had two bottles strapped to her
body, he said. They clubbed her to death, put a
tired doused in fuel over her head and set it on
fire, he said.
It seems doubtful the girl was actually a
bomber as she did not detonate any explosives
when she was attacked, said Police Deputy
Superintendent Mohammad Haruna. He
described her as the victim of "mob action
carried out by an irate crowd."
Recently some girls as young as 10 years old
have been used to carry explosives that
detonated in busy markets and bus stations,
raising fears that Boko Haram may be using
some of its hundreds of kidnap victims in bomb
attacks.
It's unclear whether such girls detonate
explosions themselves or whether the bombs
are controlled remotely.
President Goodluck Jonathan last week
condemned the Boko Haram insurgents for
choosing soft targets and said the series of
bombings are a response to the Nigerian
military's recent success in seizing back a score
of towns that had been in the hands of the
extremists for months.
A multinational military force including Nigeria's
neighbors is being formed to stop Boko
Haram's attacks outside Nigeria's borders.
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