[AnNahar] An "alarming" number of children, most of them girls, have been used by Boko Haram... not to be confused with Procol Harum, Harum Scarum, possibly to be confused with Helter Skelter. The Nigerian version of al-Qaeda and the Taliban rolled together and flavored with a smigeon of distinctly Subsaharan ignorance and brutality...
as jacket wallahs in the first months of 2017, UNICEF said Wednesday.
The Islamists have increasingly been using children to attack crowded markets, mosques and camps for internally displaced people in northeast Nigeria
... a particularly crimson stretch of Islam's bloody border...
and the broader Lake Chad region.
Experts said the number of children used in suicide kabooms by Boko Haram surged to 27 in the first quarter of this year, compared to nine over the same period in 2016.
Since 2014, 117 children -- the "vast majority" of them girls -- have been used to carry out attacks in public places across Nigeria, Chad, Niger and Cameroon
...a long, narrow country that fills the space between Nigeria and Chad on the northeast, CAR to the southeast. Prior to incursions by Boko Haram nothing ever happened there...
, said the report by the United Nations
...boodling on the grand scale...
children's agency UNICEF.
Four children were used to carry out kabooms in 2014, 56 in 2015, 30 in 2016 and 27 in the first three months of 2017, reported UNICEF.
"The increase reflects an alarming tactic by the Lion of Islams," said the report.
"This is the worst possible use of children in conflict," said Marie-Pierre Poirier, UNICEF's regional director for West and Central Africa.
In a separate statement, UNICEF said it was concerned that children were being held by the Nigerian military for alleged association with Boko Haram myrmidons.
"They are held in military barracks, separated from their parents, without medical follow-up, without psychological support, without education, under conditions and for durations that are unknown", said Patrick Rose, a UNICEF regional coordinator.
Last year,
"Babies and young children have died in appalling conditions in military detention," said the rights organization.
On Monday, the Nigerian army released nearly 600 children, women and elderly from Giwa barracks described as a "major step" by aid agencies toward the protection and reintegration of the children back into society.
Boko Haram has been largely weakened since Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari came into power in 2015, but the Lake Chad region remains unstable with some areas still completely inaccessible.