14-Year-Old Would-Be Suicide Bomber Reveals How Parents Volunteered Her For Mission

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A 14-year-old girl, Zahra’u Babangida, who was arrested with explosives strapped to her body has revealed to journalists that her parents volunteered her to take part in a suicide attack.

Zahra’u was arrested in Kano after the December 10 twin bombing in a market that killed 10 people.

She said this while police paraded her before journalists and instructed her to recount how Islamist militants allegedly forced her to take part in the attack.

According to her, her mother and father, who are both Boko Haram sympathisers, took her to one of the hideouts of the terrorists in a forest near the town of Gidan Zana in Kano state.

Narrating her ordeal, Zahra’u said one of the terrorists asked her whether she knew anything about suicide bombing.

“They said, ‘Can you do it?’ I said no.

“They said, ‘You will go to heaven if you do it.’ I said ‘No I can’t.’ They said they would shoot me or throw me into a dungeon,” she said, explaining that it was at the point of the death threat that she succumbed.

Commenting on the girl’s allegation, the Police said she was instructed to tell her story in order to boost public awareness about those responsible for the December 10 attack.

Days after she met the terrorists, Zahra’u said, she and three other girls, strapped with explosives, were brought to the Kantin Kwari market by unidentified men.

Zahra’u, who said she was injured when one of the girls detonated her bomb, fled the scene. She was discovered to be carrying explosives at a hospital on the outskirts of Kano.

The girl’s claims could, however, not be immediately verified.