Relief officials in Nigeria’s Borno state said dozens of others were spared when a third bomber refused to detonate her explosives when she discovered that her family had taken shelter at the camp.
Rescue workers transport a victim of a suicide bomb attack at a refugee for treatment at a hospital, in Maiduguri, Nigeria on Feb. 10. /AP/Jossy Ola
“There were three female bombers who entered the camp around 6:30 a.m. disguised as displaced persons,” said Satomi Alhaji Ahmed, head of the Borno State Emergency Management Agency. “Two of them set off their explosives in the camp while the third refused after realizing her parents and siblings were in the camp.”
Ahmed said two other would-be bombers were also in the group but failed to set off their explosives for unknown reasons. They remain at large, he said.
Officials said 78 people were injured in the Feb. 9 attack on the camp in the town of Dikwa that was set up for people who had been displaced by Boko Haram violence in Borno state.
Ahmed said the woman who discovered her family was at the shelter confessed that she and the two bombers were sent by Boko Haram, “and she warned that more bombers were on the way.”
“She told the military officers who interrogated her that they were among several women detailed by Boko Haram to attack the camp,” Ahmed said. “She warned more attacks were underway as the female bombers would sneak into the camp in different guises.”
A military source said the attack on the Dikwa camp was a response by Boko Haram for a recent military offensive against the terror organization in its strongholds along the border with Cameroon.
Earlier this month, troops raided three Boko Haram strongholds, killing more than 100 terrorists and freeing more than 1,000 people – including more than 100 women kidnapped and used as sex slaves by the jihadists, the military source said on condition of anonymity.
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