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14-yr-old girl escapes suicide mission twice after abduction

A 14-year-old girl has narrated how she escaped death after she was sent on two separate suicide missions by two different Boko Haram groups.

Falmata narrated how she was first abducted by the insurgents at age 13 and escaped while she was on a suicide mission but ended up in the hands of another sect group after which she was sent on a fresh suicide mission again.

Falmata said she was 13 when the insurgents abducted her and took her to a makeshift camp, where she also met other girls her age.

“The young girls were put in the tents. There were nine in mine and we had to sleep on big mats.

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“At first I wanted to escape but there was no chance,” she said.

Continuing she said: "We were scared that soldiers would storm the camp at any time and not spare us, the women, because they would think we were the fighters’ wives,” Falmata said.

Falmata said she was presented with two options: marry a fighter, or go on a mission but she had opted for the mission.

Her first mission

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Falmata narrated that during her stay in the camp of her first abductors, she was approached by armed men who instructed her to prepare herself for an important task.

“All I was thinking was, ‘Is it for marriage or what?’ But you can’t ask why you’re getting this done. Instead friends just console you and tell you to be patient.”

The survivor said she had a bomb strapped around her waist with an instruction to go and kill non-believers and go straight to paradise.

“I was so scared that I started crying. But they kept telling me to be patient, to accept that this is what life is about.

“(They said) that on reaching paradise, everything would be better,” she said.

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Falmata said she alongside two other girls were strapped to explosives and were taken to the outskirts of a village.

She further said while armed with homemade detonators, she and the other girls were ordered to walk towards the busy areas for the mission.

The first escape

Falmata narrated that while on their way to her first suicide mission, she and the two other girls had decided against the attack and fled for safety.

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The teenager said she and the two other girls asked a stranger to help her remove the belt, and subsequently went off down a dusty road.

However she ran out of luck few hours after.

Her second abduction

Further sharing her experience, Falmata said she ran out of luck while trying to escape the first suicide mission as she met with two men, who belonged to another sect of Boko Haram.

She was subsequently abducted again by the insurgents.

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The survivor explained that at the second camp, life was much similar to the previous one with the same routine, same ideology and same fate.

After about a month, Falmata was again presented with a choice – marriage or mission.

And again, she told the fighters she would go for the mission and shortly after they left her, Falmata successfully escaped.

"I met some farmers and asked them to help me remove the belt. I told them I was being forced to carry out a mission, but that I didn’t want to do it,” she said.

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Falmata said the farmers helped her get rid of the belt and she later joined a group of hunters who allowed her to travel with them across the woods.

Falmata's journey home

Trying to find her way back to Maiduguri, Borno state capital, and to her family, Falmata narrated how she and the group of hunters were ambushed by the men of Boko Haram.

Luckily, Falmata managed to slip away into the forest.

Narrating her experience in the forest she said: “I didn’t know the forest. Every little sound would scare me, so I kept moving. I’d sleep on trees when I could.

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“I think I spent a whole week without food. I would drink stagnated water and also use this water to wash my hands and feet when praying.

“I would pray two or three times a day whenever I could find water. I was so scared, but God helped me and I reached a town.”

She said a local family later gave her shelter for a few days and also helped her return to her family in Maiduguri.

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