11-year-old: Trained as suicide bomber to attack refugees

An 11-year-old boy arrested by soldiers says Boko Haram trained him as a suicide bomber and his mission was to blow himself up among refugees in a northeast Nigerian camp.
The boy is suspect No. 82 on a poster showing photographs of 100 wanted Boko Haram militants, according to army spokesman Col. Sani Kukasheka Usman.
The child said he was sneaked into the camp as a displaced child to get familiarized with the people and wait for the day he would be prompted to carry (out) his own suicide attack, Usman said in a statement.
He said the boy was arrested Tuesday by troops guarding Dalori refugee camp in Maiduguri, the northeastern city that is the birthplace of Nigeria's homegrown Islamic extremist group.

He told interrogators that three other children trained with him already have died in suicide attacks. The statement gave no details of which attacks.
The boy was still being interrogated, in the Hausa language that is all he speaks, at a military camp in Maiduguri today, according to an officer at the camp who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to reporters.

Hundreds of people have died in recent months in suicide bombings in mosques, market places, restaurants, bus stations and other crowded areas. In September, a blast from an improvised explosive device killed at least seven people at a camp for refugees in the northeastern city of Yola, 250 miles (400 kilometers) south of Maiduguri.

Boko Haram has taken its uprising across Nigeria's northeastern border and there also have been kidnappings and suicide bombings in neighboring Cameroon, Chad and Niger.
Many bombers are young women and children _ one girl bomber reportedly looked as young as 7. A military bomb expert has told the AP that some suicide bombs have been detonated remotely. That has led to speculation that Boko Haram is turning kidnap victims into unwilling weapons.
Usman identified the 11-year-old detainee as a resident of Bama, a town 45 miles (72 kilometers) northeast of Maiduguri, but did not say if he had been abducted or indoctrinated. Nigeria's air force and army had reported destroying several Boko Haram camps around Bama in August, and rescuing 178 people including 101 children held captive by the extremists.