A girl strapped with a bomb killed five worshippers in Northern Cameroon and authorities said the attack beared the hallmarks of Boko Haram insurgents.
The Governor of Cameroon’s Far North region, Midjiyawa Bakary, told Reuters on telephone on Thursday that the girl, between 12 and 13 years old, arrived at the Sanda-Wadjiri Mosque in remote Kolofata between 5 a.m. and 6 a.m.
He added that “as soon as worshippers bowed in prayer, the girl entered the Mosque and detonated her bomb, killing herself and five others.”
Bakary said Boko Haram insurgents had repeatedly used suicide bombers and had strapped
children with explosives to strike at civilian and military targets.
The insurgents, now split into at least two factions, said they were fighting to revive a medieval Islamic caliphate in the Lake Chad region, where Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger and Chad met.
Allied forces from the four countries have routed it in much of the territory it once controlled, but the group responded by scattering and stepping up attacks on civilians.
Amnesty International said last week that Boko Haram had killed 381 civilians in Nigeria and Cameroon since the beginning of April, more than double that for the preceding five months.
Of those, 158 of the deaths were in Cameroon, which the rights group linked to a rise in suicide bombings, the deadliest of which killed 16 people in Waza in July.
(Source: Reuters/NAN)