BAUCHI, Nigeria (AP) — A crowd
beat to death a teenage girl accused of planning to be a suicide bomber
and then set her body ablaze Sunday, according to police and witnesses
at a northeastern Nigerian market.
A second suspect, also a teenage girl, was arrested at Muda Lawal, the biggest market in Bauchi city.
A
spate of suicide bombings has been blamed on Nigeria's home-grown Boko
Haram Islamic extremist group, which wants to enforce strict Islamic law
across Nigeria.
The group has threatened to disrupt Nigeria's March 28
presidential and legislative elections, saying democracy is a corrupt
Western concept.
In Bauchi,
the two girls aroused suspicion by refusing to be searched when they
arrived at the gate to the vegetable market, said yam vendor Mohd Adamu.
People overpowered one girl and discovered she had two bottles strapped
to her body, he said. They clubbed her to death, put a tire doused in
fuel over her head and set it on fire, he said.
It
seems doubtful the girl was actually a bomber as she did not detonate
any explosives when she was attacked, said Police Deputy Superintendent
Mohammad Haruna. He described her as the victim of "mob action carried
out by an irate crowd."
Recently some girls as young as 10 years
old have been used to carry explosives that detonated in busy markets
and bus stations, raising fears that Boko Haram may be using some of its
hundreds of kidnap victims in bomb attacks. It's unclear whether such
girls detonate explosives themselves or whether the bombs are controlled
remotely.President Goodluck Jonathan last week condemned the Boko Haram insurgents for choosing soft targets and said the series of bombings are a response to the Nigerian military's recent success in seizing back a score of towns that had been in the hands of the extremists for months.
A multinational military force including Nigeria's neighbors is being formed to stop Boko Haram's attacks outside Nigeria's borders.
Some
10,000 people died in Nigeria from Boko Haram's violence last year,
compared to 2,000 in the first four years, according to the U.S. Council
on Foreign Relations, and some 1.5 million people have been driven from
their homes.