Suicide bomber kills three in Konduga

Three persons were killed and one badly injured on Friday when a lone female suicide bomber detonated explosives strapped around her body at a crowded place in Konduga town of Borno State, witnesses said.

“The female bomber, who was in her early teens, sneaked into the town in dark hours and blew herself up at a crowded place behind the palace of the District Head, ” Goni Modu, a resident of Konduga told PREMIUM TIMES on phone.

The attack is the first suicide bombing in 11 months in the country.

Confirming the incident to PREMIUM TIMES, Danbatta Bello, a chieftain of the youth vigilante group, best known as Civilian-JTF, said “we recovered three bodies and that of the female suicide bomber. One other person was injured and has been evacuated to the hospital.”

ALSO READ: Boko Haram: Group wants state of emergency in Borno

Mr Bello worried that the Konduga suicide bombing, coming nearly 11 months after the last episode was recorded, “was a setback in the ongoing counterinsurgency operation.”

On January 30, a 12-year-old girl detonated a bomb that killed three boys at an Islamic school in Muna Dalti, a suburb of Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State.

Boko Haram had used scores of women and teenage girls to carry out attacks in soft target locations as well as market places that had claimed hundreds of lives in the decade-long insurgency.