UNICEF Condemns Use of Children in Suicidal Attacks by Boko Haram

United Nations - The United Nations Children Funds (UNICEF) denounced today the increasing use of children by fundamentalist Sect Boko Haram, to carry out suicidal attacks in countries of the Chad Lake Basin.

In a report spread here the specialized agency warned that in the first quarter of 2017 terrorists used at least 27 minors in those repudiated acts, three times more than those recorded in the same period of 2016 in Nigerian Chad, Camerron and Niger.

'The number of children as suicide bombers in Boko Haram is almost the same in the first three months of this year as in all of 2016. We are facing the worst possible use of children in a conflict,' regretted UNICEF ​​regional director for West and Central Africa, Marie-Pierre Poirier.

According to the Fund, the tactics of the extremists generate alarm, particularly the use of minors.

UNICEF ​​statistics show that since 2014, nearly 120 children have been used to carry out suicide attacks, 56 of them in 2015.

Besides repudiating this practice of Boko Haram, the UN agency warned of its consequences, such as increasing security controls for children at checkpoints.

'These minors are victims, not perpetrators,' stressed Poirier, who demanded an end to the use of children in terrorist attacks.

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