The United Nations has expressed worry over the surge in the number of children mostly girls being used as human bombs in Nigeria by the militant group Boko Haram.
The UN children’s agency, UNICEF on Tuesday said in a statement that the trend is appalling.
According to the UNICEF report, “Children have been used repeatedly in this way over the last few years and so far this year, the number of children used is already four times higher than it was for all of last year.”
It said since the beginning of this year “83 children have been used as ‘human bombs’; 55 were girls, most often under 15 years old; 27 were boys, and one was a baby strapped to a girl.”
The UN body said that the use of children as human bombs is an atrocity since these children are “above all, victims, not perpetrators.”
Militant group Boko Haram according to the Unicef statement “has sometimes, but not always, claimed responsibility for these attacks, which target the civilian population.”
“The use of children in such attacks has had a further impact of creating suspicion and fear of children who have been released, rescued or escaped from Boko Haram,” the statement added.
Unicef said a huge number of people have also been displaced as a result of the activities of Boko Haram coupled with a “malnutrition crisis – a combination that is also deadly for children.”
There are 1.7 million people displaced by the insurgency in the northeast, 85 per cent of them in Borno State, where most of these attacks take place.
Source: Africafeeds.com
