Teenage girl killed by crowd after being suspected of suicide bombing

A teenage Nigerian girl was killed by a crowd after she was suspected of being a suicide bomber.

An article at Yahoo! News reported that the girl was killed on Sunday after the crowd discovered "bottles strapped to her body." 

The killing took place in Muda Lawal, the largest marketplace in Bauchin city, in northeastern Nigeria. A second suspected suicide bomber and companion to the slain girl was also arrested in the marketplace.

According to Yahoo! News, the crowd became suspicious of the girls after they refused to be searched by security personnel when they arrived at the market. The victim was eventually overpowered by the crowd, who then found the bottles, which they believed to be improvised explosive devices. In response, the girl was clubbed to death and her corpse was set on fire.

However, Bauchin's Police Deputy Superintendent Mohammad Haruna believed that the girl was not a suicide bomber as she did not detonate any explosive device when she was attacked. Haruna instead described the killing as a "mob action carried out by an irate crowd."

Northeastern Nigeria has been subjected to three consecutive bombings attributed to Islamist radical group Boko Haram in the past week. The group has seen successes in the region in Nigeria and currently holds large swathes of territory in the northeast, including areas surrouding Maiduguri, the state capital of Borno.

A child suicide bomber entered a market in the town of Potiskum on February 22 and detonated her bombs, killing five people. According to The Guardian, the suicide bomber was believed to be around 7 seven years old.

Two days later, two more suicide bombings occurred, one of them in a bus station in Potiskum and the other in Kano, 223 miles or 360 kilometres away from Potiskum. The BBC said that 17 people were killed in the blast in Potiskum, while the death toll stood at 10 in the Kano attack.

The nature of the attacks has raised fears that the suicide bombers may be kidnap victims held by the Boko Haram, Yahoo! News reported. 

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