Alwaght- Eleven worshippers were killed on Wednesday when a suspected Boko Haram Takfiri terrorist attacked a mosque on Nigeria's border with Cameroon.
The Boko Haram suicide bomber blew himself up amid worshippers inside the mosque in Gamboru town in Borno state around 05:00 AM local time (0400 GMT), shortly before dawn prayers. "Fourteen bodies have been pulled out of the rubble," said Umar Kachalla, a vigilante, adding that the mosque had been completely destroyed. Borno state is the hotbed of Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria.
Another vigilante, Shehu Mada, reported that a patrol by his peers had detected four suspected bombers in the vicinity of Gamboru and arrested one of them after a chase an hour before the attack was carried out. "Two of them turned back and fled while the fourth disappeared into the darkness and we believe it was he who attacked the mosque," Mada added.
Sources say the teenage suicide bomber hailed from Gamboru town, and the father to the assailant was among the 11 persons who lost their lives in the attack. Locals say the suicide bomber disowned his parents and joined Boko Haram in the bush.
Boko Haram terrorists get inspiration from Wahhabism, an extremist reading of Islam that is the official sect in Saudi Arabia. Wahhabism, sometimes referred to Salafism, is also the ideology of other Takfiri terrorist groups in the world, including al-Qaeda, ISIS, al-Nusra Front, and al-Shabaab.
Boko Haram group has waged an armed campaign in northeastern Nigeria since 2009. The conflict has left at least 20,000 people dead and displaced more than 2.6 million.
At its peak, the group controlled large swaths of territory in the Lake Chad region, but the Nigerian military, with assistance from Chad, Cameroon and Niger, has pushed its fighters out of a number of provinces in the northeast.
Despite the pushback from the international coalition, Boko Haram remains active in the area, often carrying out suicide attacks against civilians.