Nigeria mosque 'targeted by female suicide bomber'

A female suicide bomber in Nigeria has killed one person in a queue by a mosque in Maiduguri, witnesses say.

It comes after militants attacked the village of Dawari on the outskirts of the north-eastern city on Sunday night.

The authorities said 21 people died and 91 others were injured as the gunmen armed with rocket-propelled grenades fired from trucks during the raid.

Last week, Nigeria's leader said the war against Islamist Boko Haram militants had been "technically won".

»Who are Boko Haram?

President Muhammadu Buhari, who took office in May promising to defeat the group, told the newsmen that the militants could no longer mount "conventional attacks" against security forces or population centres.

It had been reduced to fighting with improvised explosives devices (IED), he said.

'Ten suicide bombers killed' A resident in the Ushari Bulabulin district of Maiduguri, who asked not to be named, told the our newsmen Hausa Service that the woman was standing in a crowd of people waiting to pass through security before entering a mosque.

"People were being scanned before they were allowed to pass, and she went into the middle of the gathering. She killed one person and injured six or seven... We cannot see the lower part of her body - the bomb must have completely destroyed the lower part of her body," he said.

The military has not commented on the latest attack.

A spokesman, Col Mustapha Anka, said that during the attack on Dawari, the security forces had killed 10 suicide bombers.

The militants drove into the village on the back of three trucks and reportedly began firing indiscriminately.

Muhammad Kanar, from the National Emergency Management Agency, told the newsmen that the injured had been taken to three hospitals in the city for treatment.

Boko Haram's six-year insurgency in north-eastern Nigeria has led to the deaths of some 17,000 people, destroyed more than 1,000 schools and displaced more than 1.5 million people.

It has been described as one of the world's deadliest terror groups.

Only a few days ago, Islamic State, to whom Boko Haram is affiliated, said its West Africa division had launched more than 100 attacks - killing more than 1,000 people - over the past two months, the Site Intelligence Group, with monitors jihadist websites, reported.

Critics of the government argue that it has exaggerated the scale of its success against the militants, and that each time the army claims to have wiped out Boko Haram, the militants have quietly rebuilt.

Boko Haram at a glance:

• Founded in 2002, initially focused on opposing Western-style education - Boko Haram means "Western education is forbidden" in the Hausa language

• Launched military operations in 2009

• Thousands killed, mostly in north-eastern Nigeria, hundreds abducted, including at least 200 schoolgirls

• Joined so-called Islamic State, now calls itself IS's "West African province"

• Seized large area in north-east, where it declared caliphate

• Regional force has retaken most territory this year

AbleMoJah® Nigeria.