A seven-year-old girl, yesterday, killed herself and five others in a suicide bombing in Potiskum, Yobe State.

According to a vigilante leader, Buba Lawan, nineteen people were injured in the blast in Yobe State’s commercial capital.

“So far, five people were killed with the girl while 19 others have been taken to hospital for injuries,” Lawan said.

A hospital source, speaking on condition of anonymity, also confirmed the dead and the wounded count.

Yesterday’s bombing in Potiskum was the second suicide attack in or near the market where new and second-hand phones are sold and repaired.

The first attack occurred January 11, when two suicide bombers, one of whom appeared to be around 15 years old, blew themselves up outside the market, killing six people and injuring 37 others.

Before yesterday’s strike, suspicious security guards and vigilantes said they tried to prevent the girl, who witnesses said appeared around seven, from entering the market.

According to Lawan, “we sent her back four times, because given her age, she did not have anything to do in the market. When we were screening people, she bent and tried to pass under the ropes, some distance from our view. That was when the explosives went off.”

In a sign of the distrust generated by the suicide campaign, Lawan said “we have barred women from entering the market to prevent further attacks.”

•Excerpted from a Vanguard report. Photo shows a bomb blast scene.