Doubts at bombers' Nigerian kidnap claims

There are doubts about the claims of two girls arrested in Cameroon over an attempted suicide bombing that they were kidnapped in Nigeria.

Nigeria's government doubts that two girls who were arrested while attempting to carry out a suicide bombing in Cameroon were among the 219 Nigerian school girls kidnapped by Islamic insurgents in 2014.

The doubts arose after it emerged that the girls, captured by a civilian security group in the town of Mora in Far North region late on Friday, were about 10 years old, spokesman for President Muhammadu Buhari, Garba Shehu said in a statement late on Saturday.

"One of the two is also believed to be heavily drugged and therefore not in full control of her senses," Shehu said.

Nigeria's Minister of Women's Affairs Aisha Alhassan and the Nigerian high commissioner in Cameroon are working with Cameroonian authorities to determine the girls' identities, he said.

The arrested girls are due to be brought to Cameroon's capital, Yaounde, on Monday.

"The Nigerian High Commission will receive the two and will facilitate their access to the two girls once permission to meet and verify their identity is obtained from the Cameroonian authorities," Shehu said.

The girls were apprehended while they were walking towards a crowded area with explosive devices around their waists late on Friday.

"The vigilance committee members forced the bombers to switch off their devices," senior divisional officer for the Mayo-Sava Division, Babila Akao, told dpa.

"One of them escaped and the two others were transported on motorbikes to Mora where they were grilled by security forces." During the questioning the girls told security officials that they were among the group kidnapped in 2014.

Some 276 girls were kidnapped from Chibok Secondary School by Boko Haram on April 14, 2014. A group of 57 of them escaped shortly after the attack. The rest, 219 of them, have not been seen since.

Thousands of young women and girls have been captured by Boko Haram since it launched its insurgency in 2009.

In some cases they have been raped, forcibly married, trained to fight and made to participate in armed attacks, sometimes on their own towns and villages, according to human rights group Amnesty International.