Boko Haram bombers using babies to thwart detection in Nigeria

Nigerian authorities have warned that female Takfiri bombers are using babies to thwart detection before their attacks.

According to a new report, Nigerian officials stated that terrorist groups have been using women to carry out bombing attacks for some time but the use of babies in attacks signals a "dangerous" trend.

The report, published by the state-run BBC on Monday, called these bombings “suicide attacks,” but the fact that the innocent infants have no forethought or deliberation for killing themselves and others render the terminology null and void.

On January 13, two women wearing concealed explosives managed to slip past a checkpoint in the town of Madagali and detonate their bombs, killing themselves and four other people. The assailants were able to slip past security because they were mistaken for civilians as they were carrying infants.

The main suspect for the blast is the Takfiri Boko Haram terrorist group, which is known for using women and young girls in their attacks. Boko Haram has pledged allegiance to Daesh, another Takfiri group, which has been wreaking havoc in the Middle East and North Africa over the past few years.   

In 2015, four women attempted to launch another attack on the town. Two were stopped at a checkpoint, but the two other, who were carrying babies, managed to pass the checkpoints and explode their explosives.

Nigeria has been at war with Boko Haram since the group started an insurgency in Borno about eight years ago. Almost 15,000 people have been killed while the violence has displaced more than two million.

In recent months, army troops and civilian fighters in Nigeria have managed to foil many bomb attacks involving terrorists wearing explosive vests before the assailants were able to reach heavily-populated targets and detonate their bombs of their own accord. In response to the government’s actions, the terrorists have increased their bombing attacks.

On January 16, at least four people, including a university professor, were killed after a young girl, accompanied by a small child, detonated her explosive-laden vest at a university campus in Nigeria’s northeastern province of Borno.

Half a million West African kids malnourished

Meanwhile, the UN’s West African humanitarian coordinator, Toby Lanzer announced that Boko Haram’s actions in the region have put the lives of over half a million children in danger of severe malnutrition.

He stressed that if these children do not receive aid soon, they will die, adding that several communities have already lost all their infants. “If they don’t get the help they need on time, they die."

“What we have seen is extraordinary…I have seen adults sapped of all energy, who are almost unable to walk. We have had villages and towns devoid of 2- and 3- and 4-year-old children because they’ve died,” he added.

While noting that Nigeria and the Lake Chad region have been hit worst by the crisis, he stressed that there are about 11 million people there are “in desperate need” of aid while some 7.1 million more of them are “severely food-insecure.”

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