KANO, Nigeria, Jan 28, 2024 (BSS/AFP) - Six people, including four
children, were killed on Saturday when an explosive device collected by metal
scavengers exploded in northeast Nigeria's Borno state where troops are
fighting jihadist groups, a local official and two anti-jihadist militia told
AFP Sunday.

The home-made bomb went off when two metal scavengers were sorting through
scraps they collected from the bush outside the town of Gubio, 80 kilometres
from the regional capital Maiduguri, the sources said.

"Six people were killed in the IED (improvised explosive device) explosion,
two men and four children who were pupils of an Islamic seminary near the
scene," Mali Bulama, political administrator for Gubio district said.

The identity of the men had yet to be determined because they were badly
mutilated by the blast that occurred inside an unfinished building used to
store scraps, Bulama added.

Militia leader Babakura Kolo said the men were rummaging through heaps of
metal when the device went off.

"The metal scavengers were sorting out the metals for possible objects of
value when they brought out the IED from one of the sacks and it went off,
killing them and four children playing nearby," Kolo said.

Umar Ari, another militia member, gave the same toll.

The 14-year jihadist violence in the northeast has killed 40,000 and
displaced around two million from their homes, forcing them to live in
makeshift camps where they receive meagre food handouts from international
charities.

Many of the displaced comb the landscape for firewood and metal scraps to
raise money for food to supplement inadequate rations.

The loggers and scrap metal scavengers as well as farmers and herders are
targeted by the jihadists who accuse them of spying on them for troops and
militias fighting them.

Last June, Borno state authorities banned scrap metal collecting following an
increase in jihadist attacks on the scavengers whom the authorities also
accused of vandalising public property.

Despite the ban, scavengers continue their search amid risk of attacks by
jihadists and explosion from unexploded ordnances.

In July 2022, 13 metal scrap collectors were killed and three others injured
when an unexploded ordnance they excavated from the bush went off in the town
of Bama near Sambisa forest, a jihadist enclave.