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UNICEF warns about alarming rise in suicide attacks by women, girls in Nigeria

Xinhua, May 28, 2015 Adjust font size:

The United Nations Children' s Fund (UNICEF) reported that more women and children have been used as suicide bombers in northeast Nigeria in the first five months of this year than during the whole of 2014, a UN spokesman said here Wednesday.

As of May 2015, there have been 27 attacks and in at least three-quarters of these incidents, women and children were reportedly used to carry out the attacks, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said at a daily news briefing here.

UNICEF remains concerned that the increasing use of children as suicide bombers could lead to children being perceived as potential threats, and stresses that they are first and foremost victims not perpetrators, Dujarric said.

Three-quarters of the attacks were carried out by female bombers, some as young as seven, UNICEF said.

Militant Islamist group Boko Haram is waging an insurgency in Nigeria. Nigerian army said in March that it had recaptured all cities and towns from the group, which has pledged allegiance to Islamic State militants fighting for a global caliphate.

UNICEF said it did not believe that the girls carried out the bombings willingly.

Zainab Bangura, the special representative of the UN secretary- general on sexual violence in conflict, also condemned in a statement a wider pattern of women and girls being deliberately targeted by inter-linked extremist groups, who share an ideological opposition to the education, rights and freedoms of women.

Bangura also issued a statement following her visit this week to Cuba to discuss conflict-related sexual violence with the delegations of the government of Colombia and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia - People's Army (FARC-EP).

She urged all parties to the peace dialogue to listen to the voices of women and put their protection and empowerment at the heart of the discussions. She also urged them to do everything possible to ensure that the gains that have been made at the peace table are not lost. Endite