Nigeria wants to know if two girls arrested before they could detonate suicide bombs are Nigerian schoolgirls kidnapped by the Islamist terror group Boko Haram two years ago, state broadcaster NTA said Saturday.
Friday, three female suicide bombers planning to carry out an attack near the northern Cameroon village of Limani were spotted by local vigilantes before they could blow themselves up, Cameroon’s state broadcaster CRTV said.
One girl escaped. One girl who was captured claimed to be part of the group of 276 teenage girls kidnapped by Boko Haram from the Nigerian town of Chibok in April 2014, NTA reported.
Boko Haram sparked international outrage when it abducted the girls from the town in northeastern Nigeria, police said. About 50 girls escaped but authorities fear the rest may have been raped, brutalized or forced to convert to Islam.
The Nigerian government designated two parents from Chibok to travel to Cameroon and visit the girls, NTA said. A timeline has yet to be announced about the Chibok parents’ trip.
One of the attackers is being held by the Cameroonian military and a second was sent to a health unit for medical treatment, though her condition was not revealed, CRTV reported. One of the two was also believed to be heavily drugged and therefore not in full control of her senses, NTA said.
Boko Haram is a militant Islamic group based in Nigeria whose purpose is to institute Sharia, or Islamic law.
The group especially opposes the education of women and its name translates to “Western education is a sin” in the local language.
Under its version of Sharia law, women should be at home raising children and looking after their husbands, not at school learning to read and write.
Its members have repeatedly targeted places of learning in deadly attacks that have highlighted its fundamental philosophy against education.