Two little girls approximately seven or eight years old blew themselves up in a northeastern Nigerian market on Sunday, killing themselves and wounding at least 17 others, witnesses said.
The girls “must have been seven or eight”, a local militia member in Maiduguri said.
Emergency services on-site in the town, the epicentre of the Boko Haram jihadist insurgency, said 17 people sustained “relatively serious” injuries.
Maiduguri militia-man Jabo said he saw the girls today immediately before the explosion.
“They got out of a rickshaw and walked right in front of me without showing the slightest sign of emotion,” he said.
“I tried to speak with one of them, in Hausa and in English, but she didn’t answer. I thought they were looking for their mother,” he added.