(MENAFN- The Peninsula) A female suicide bomber on a tricycle killed six people yesterday in a new attack on a market in Maiduguri, witnesses said, as Nigeriaand its neighbours finalise a force to fight Boko Haram.
"We took seven dead bodies, including that of the female bomber, to the hospital. Eight other people were injured and are now receiving treatment in a hospital," Babakura Kolo, a vigilante in the northeastern town said.
The blast was the latest in a wave of attacks on busy markets - many by teenage girls - in Nigeria, Chad and Cameroon, which claimed at least 130 lives and left scores injured this month.
"The attack (on the Gamboru) market happened around 6:30 am (0530 GMT) as the grocers were arriving in the market which starts early," according to Kolo, who became a vigilante to help the Nigerian army combat Boko Haram.
"From accounts we gathered from people around, the woman arrived on a taxi tricycle, as every woman grocer does. She blew herself up as soon as the tricycle stopped in the midst of other tricycles dropping traders off," Kolo said.
"I was at home when I heard a loud explosion that sent me rushing out of my house. It was coming from the Gamboru market... The place was littered with victims and burning rickshaws," a local resident said.
The extremist sect, whose name roughly translates as "Western education is forbidden", has carried on its campaign of attacks on security forces, suicide bombings and bloody raids on villages across Nigeria's north and eastern borders despite a major regional military campaign against them.
The Chadian army yesterday said it had killed 117 jihadists in the past fortnight during an ongoing search of islands on Lake Chad to root out the jihadists. Two soldiers had died and two were injured, a military spokesman said.
Boko Haram has used the Lake Chad region as a hideout to fall back from offensives. It lies where the borders of Cameroon, Chad and Nigeria converge.
Police arrested a boy of 15 carrying "explosives in a plastic bag". Two suspected Cameroonian "accomplices" were later picked up for questioning, the source said.
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