A female suicide bomber and Boko Haram gunmen killed 16 people in Nigeria as the commander of a new multinational force tasked with fighting the Islamists pledged today to crush the insurgency "very soon".
Major General Iliya Abbah's appointment in an Abuja ceremony as chief of the 8,700-strong force came as a woman bomber on a tricycle killed six people in a busy market in Maiduguri, the largest city in Nigeria's restive northeastern Borno state.
The jihadists also struck neighbouring Yobe state, killing at least 10 people including two women on Wednesday evening in a revenge attack against local vigilantes, a local official told AFP today.
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The suicide attack was the latest in a wave of Boko Haram bombings -- often by female bombers -- targeting markets in Nigeria, Chad and Cameroon that have killed and wounded scores in the past month.
Boko Haram has kidnapped thousands of civilians, including women and children, with many either forced or indoctrinating into joining the extremists, official say.
"The attack (on the Gamboru) market happened around 6:30 am (local time) as the grocers were arriving," Babakura Kolo, a vigilante in Maiduguri, told AFP.
"From accounts we gathered from people around, the woman arrived on a taxi tricycle, as every woman grocer does. She blew herself up as soon as the tricycle stopped in the midst of other tricycles dropping traders off," Kolo said.
Another local resident was at home when he heard the blast, and he rushed to the scene immediately afterwards.
"The place was littered with victims and burning rickshaws," he told AFP.
Gamboru market is the second largest in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state and birthplace of Boko Haram, which has killed at least 15,000 people since its bloody insurgency began in 2009.
The extremist group, whose name roughly translates as "Western education is forbidden", has carried on its campaign of attacks on security forces, suicide bombings and bloody raids on villages across Nigeria's north and eastern borders despite a major regional military campaign against them.
