ABUJA, Nigeria — Strapped with a booby-trapped vest and sent by the extremist group Boko Haram to kill as many people as possible, the young teenage girl tore off the explosives and fled as soon as she was out of sight of her handlers.
Her two companions, however, completed their grisly mission, by walking into a crowd of hundreds at Dikwa refugee camp in northeast Nigeria, blowing themselves up and killing 58 people.
The girl was found later by local self-defense forces. Her tearful account is one of the first indications that at least some of the child bombers used by Boko Haram are aware that they are about to die and kill others.
‘‘She said she was scared because she knew she would kill people. But she was also frightened of going against the instructions of the men who brought her to the camp,’’ said Modu Awami, a self-defense fighter who helped question the girl. Her story was corroborated when she led soldiers to the unexploded vest, Awami said Thursday, speaking by phone from the refugee camp, which holds 50,000 people who have fled Boko Haram’s Islamic uprising.
The girl is in custody and has given officials information about other planned bombings that has helped them increase security at the camp, said Satomi Ahmed, chairman of the Borno State Emergency Management Agency.
The United States on Thursday strongly condemned the bombings. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the United States remains committed to assisting those afflicted by the conflict and supports efforts to provide greater protection for civilians and the regional fight against terrorism.
Boko Haram’s six-year-old Islamic insurgency has killed 20,000 people, made 2.5 million homeless, and spread across Nigeria’s borders.
Awami said he had no information about how the girl came to be with Boko Haram. The extremists have kidnapped thousands of people and there are fears they are turning some captives into weapons. An army bomb disposal expert has said some suicide bombs are detonated remotely, so the carriers may not have control over when the bomb goes off.
Even two days later, it’s difficult to say exactly how many people died at Dikwa because there were corpses and body parts everywhere, including in the cooking pots, Awami said.
‘‘Women, children, men, and aged persons all died,’’ he said. ‘‘I cannot say the exact number as some cannot be counted because the bodies were all mangled.’’
The latest atrocity blamed on Boko Haram extremists was committed against people who had been driven from their homes by the insurgents and had spent a year across the border in Cameroon. They had only returned to Nigeria in January when soldiers declared the area safe. The scene of the killings is 30 miles from the border with Cameroon.
Such attacks make it difficult for the government to persuade people to return home. The extremists have also razed homes and businesses, destroyed wells and boreholes and stolen livestock and seed grains that farmers need to start their life again.