A 13-year-old girl has said she was
given to Boko Haram extremists and was then arrested after refusing to
explode a suicide bomb at a market in Nigeria.
Kano, the key city in the mainly Muslim north, has been among the places hardest hit by Boko Haram's five-year uprising aimed at creating a caliphate in the region.
Police this week paraded the young girl, who was arrested after presenting at hospital with injuries sustained in the market bombing attack.
The girl, known as Zaharau, told a news conference on Wednesday night that she saw many people being buried alive at the Boko Haram camp where her father took her, News Corp reports.
She said her captors asked if she wanted to go to paradise and, when she said yes, they told her she would have to be a suicide bomber.
“When I was told I would have to die to enter paradise, that I would have to explode a bomb and die, I said I cannot do it,” she said.
When they threatened to kill her, she allowed them to strap her into a vest, saying she was ‘afraid to be buried alive’.
She said she was taken to Kano’s textile market where the two other girls detonated their bombs.
Four people were killed in the attack, while seven people - including Zaharau – were injured.
The girl said she then went to hospital with the injuries, where she was arrested after the taxi driver who dropped her off reported she left the vest bomb in the car.
Boko Haram attracted international condemnation earlier this year when members kidnapped 276 schoolgirls from a boarding school in April.
While dozens managed to escape, more than 200 remain missing.
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