Female suicide bomber attacks Nigerian bus station

A teenage female suicide bomber took at least five people with her at a crowded bus station in northeast Nigeria on Sunday, leaving dozens of others wounded. Her victims were mostly children who were begging or selling peanuts at the time of the attack, witnesses told reporters.

"I counted five corpses and saw more than two dozen injured people," an official who spoke on condition of anonymity told German news agency dpa.

The bomber managed to get through security at the station in Damaturu, the capital of Yobe state, just four days after a similar attack in neighboring Borno state.

No one has claimed responsibility for the attack but it fits the pattern of violence used by the Islamist group Boko Haram, whose six-year insurgency claimed 10,000 lives in 2014 alone. The militants have launched many attacks on Damaturu, a city of about 90,000 people, and even tried to capture it last year, but were repelled after a lengthy battle.

The Nigerian military similarly pushed the terrorists back from the city of Gombe, also in the northeast, the day before the suicide attack. The Islamists dropped leaflets around the city warning residents not to vote in the parliamentary election in March, as their fighters were planning to attack polling stations.

In recent weeks Boko Haram has attacked neighboring Cameroon, Niger and Chad, spreading what was formerly solely a Nigerian battle. Those countries and others are planning to form a joint force to help Nigeria fight the extremists.

es/cmk (AP, dpa)