Female suicide bomber targets Nigeria college

A female suicide bomber blew herself up in a college campus in northern Nigeria's biggest city of Kano, killing three people and critically wounding another seven.

The bomber targeted youths who were looking at a notice board for national youth service in Kano State Polytechnic.

While there was no immediate claim of responsibility, Boko Haram, which has pledged to create an Islamic state in Nigeria, has repeatedly attacked several locations in the country’s north in recent months.

Though much of the violence is concentrated in the remote northeast, the armed group has struck in several bomb attacks across Nigeria since April.

Wednesday's attack was the fourth such attack by a woman in Kano in less than a week, a security source said.

Government spokesman Mike Omeri also confirmed the attack in a statement to the AFP news agency.

"At about 2:30 p.m. (1330 GMT), another female suicide bomber exploded an improvised explosive device at the Kano State Polytechnic."

In a separate incident in the northern Katsina state, security forces arrested three suspects believed to be members of the armed group Boko Haram, including an underage girl with explosives strapped to her body, the government spokesman said.

The "10-year-old ... was discovered to have been strapped with an explosive belt," Omeri said.

The two other suspects were a man and an 18-year-old girl who attempted to flee from authorities at a checkpoint, the government spokesman told Al Jazeera.

The news comes as authorities also reported Wednesday that 13 people were killed and 35 injured when two mosques in northern Yobe state were bombed on Tuesday night amid celebrations of Eid al-Fitr, the Muslim holiday marking the end of Ramadan.

Wednesday’s incident is the latest in a spate of fatal attacks in the region attributed to Boko Haram.

Two female suicide bombers blew themselves up at a trade show and a petrol station in Kano on Monday, killing one other person and injuring at least six others.

On Sunday, a female suicide bomber killed herself but no one else while trying to target police officers. In a separate incident that day, Boko Haram claimed a cross-border attack into Cameroon that killed at least three people and kidnapped the wife of the vice prime minister.

Al Jazeera and wire services