Members of a local militia in Nigeria say they disarmed a would-be suicide bomber on her way to the marketplace in the city of Maiduguri in Borno state. The action earlier this week thwarted a second attack in two days on the site.
Members of the Nigeria Vigilante Group told reporters they stopped a young woman at a roadblock who was hiding explosives beneath her veil.
The militant group Boko Haram has been using young women more and more as suicide bombers.
On Monday, witnesses in Maiduguri said two explosions ripped through the crowded market where two female suicide bombers had killed dozens a week ago. Witnesses say at least five people were killed in the Monday attack.
Also Monday, residents of Damaturu, the capital of Yobe state, said suspected Boko Haram militants attacked a police facility in the city.
The French news agency reports more than 150 people were killed in Monday's fighting in Damaturu. A senior rescue official said at least 115 bodies were brought to the local morgue after the attack. Six soldiers were reported among the dead. A spokesman for Nigeria's federal police said 38 police officers were killed in the attack.
Yobe state is the site of some of the most brutal Boko Haram attacks, including the slaughter of college and high school students, as well as the recent bombing of the government secondary school in Potiskum.
Boko Haram has been blamed for thousands of deaths during its five-year insurgency in Nigeria. It has seized towns in Borno and Adamawa states for what it calls a caliphate to be ruled under strict Islamic law.
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