KANO: A female suicide bomber and Boko Haram gunmen killed 16 people in Nigeria as the commander of a new multinational force tasked with fighting the Islamists pledged on Friday to crush the insurgency "very soon".
Major General Iliya Abbah's appointment in an Abuja ceremony as chief of the 8,700-strong force came as a woman bomber on a tricycle killed six people in a busy market in Maiduguri, the largest city in Nigeria's restive northeastern Borno state.
The jihadists also struck neighbouring Yobe state, killing at least 10 people including two women on Wednesday evening in a revenge attack against local vigilantes, a local official told AFP on Friday.
The suicide attack was the latest in a wave of Boko Haram bombings -- often by female bombers -- targeting markets in Nigeria, Chad and Cameroon that have killed and wounded scores in the past month. AFP
