The United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICEF has condemned the use of children as suicide bombers in Mandarari community in Borno state.
The UNICEF Representative in Nigeria, Peter Hawkins in a statement released in Maiduguri, said the agency appealed to all those involved in this terrible conflict to protect children at all times and to keep them out of harm’s way.
The UNICEF said that since 2012, non-state armed groups in north-east Nigeria have recruited and used children as combatants and non-combatants, rape and force girls to marry, and committed other grave violations against children. It added that children were used in suicide attacks in Nigeria, Chad, Niger Republic and Cameroon.
It was reported that the Borno State Emergency Management Agency, SEMA in its report said thirty persons were killed and forty two others injured in multiple bomb blasts that rocked a Borno village.
According to several reports, three children; two girls and a boy were used to detonate explosives that killed many and others injured at a community football viewing centre in Konduga in Borno state.
