Nigeria suicide bomber kills 6 as military hit Boko Haram hard

A female suicide bomber on a tricycle killed six people Friday in a new attack on a market in Maiduguri, witnesses said, as Nigeria and its neighbours finalise a force to fight Boko Haram.

"We took seven dead bodies, including that of the female bomber, to the hospital. Eight other people were injured and are now receiving treatment in a hospital," Babakura Kolo, a vigilante in the northeastern town, told AFP.

The blast was the latest in a wave of attacks on busy markets -- many by teenage girls -- in Nigeria, Chad and Cameroon, which claimed at least 130 lives and left scores injured this month.

"The attack (on the Gamboru) market happened around 6:30 am (0530 GMT) as the grocers were arriving in the market which starts early," according to Kolo, who became a vigilante to help the Nigerian army combat Boko Haram.

"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.

"I was at home when I heard a loud explosion that sent me rushing out of my house. It was coming from the Gamboru market... The place was littered with victims and burning rickshaws," a local resident 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 sect, 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.

- '117 jihadists killed' -

The Chadian army on Friday said it had killed 117 jihadists in the past fortnight during an ongoing  search of islands on Lake Chad to root out the jihadists. Two soldiers had died and two were injured, a military spokesman said.

Boko Haram has used the Lake Chad region as a hideout to fall back from offensives by Nigerian and Chadian troops inside Nigeria. The lies where the borders of Cameroon, Chad and Nigeria converge.      

Borno and other parts of northeast Nigeria have seen a surge in violence since President Muhammadu Buhari took office in May vowing to crush the six-year campaign for an Islamic caliphate.

A woman described by locals as mentally unstable blew blew herself up last Sunday at a crowded market in Damaturu, capital of neighbouring Yobe state, killing at least 14 people.

Damaturu was also the scene of a triple suicide bombing on July 18 when three girls blew themselves up, killing at least 13 people as residents prepared for the Eid festival marking the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

The Maiduguri attack follows a visit this week by Buhari to Cameroon to discuss a stronger regional alliance against the Islamists in the wake of an unprecedented wave of five suicide bombings there.

Two of those attacks killed at least 33 people in the northern market town of Maroua, where a police officer on Friday confirmed a report that they had arrested three youths on Thursday.

Police arrested a boy of 15 carrying "explosives in a plastic bag" and with no identity papers on him, according to a source close to the authorities. Two suspected Cameroonian "accomplices" were later picked up and the trio was handed over to elite troops for questioning, the source said.

On Thursday, Nigeria named Major General Iliya Abbah, who previously commanded military operations in the oil-rich Niger Delta, to head a five-nation Multi-National Joint Task Force to take on Boko Haram.

The force is to comprise 8,700 troops from Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon, Niger and Benin.