Sickening: A young girl has been used as a suicide bomber.

A girl thought to be as young as seven has killed herself and five others in a suicide bombing in Nigeria.

A total of 19 other people were injured in the Sunday attack.

The strike, on a market in Potiskum, north-east Nigeria, is the latest in a string of attacks in which children have been used as suicide bombers, The Guardian reports.

In January, two suicide bombers blew themselves up outside the same market killing six people and injuring 37 others, The Guardian reports. One of those suicide bombers was around 15.

Previous attacks have been blamed on Islamist extremist group Boko Haram, and the latest attack came as the country’s president Goodluck Jonathan, conceded his government had underrated the capacity of Boko Haram.

“Probably at the beginning, we, and I mean myself and the team, we underrated the capacity of Boko Haram,” Mr Jonathan told newspaper ThisDay in an interview printed yesterday.

Previously, Mamamia wrote:

A 10-year-old girl wandered into a bustling market on Saturday.

It was lunchtime and the market, in the Nigerian city of Maiduguri, was packed with local shoppers.

The market in Maiduguri. (Photo: Getty Images.)

The little girl was searched at the entrance to the market at about 12:40pm.

And then the unthinkable happened: a device strapped to the girl exploded, claiming a total of 20 lives and injuring another 18, police said.

The tiny child had been used as a suicide bomber — and she was so young, it’s hard to imagine that she realised the terror she’d been drawn into until it was too late.

“The girl was about 10 years old and I doubt much if she actually knew what was strapped to her body,” civilian vigilante Ashiru Mustapha told the AFP news agency. “(S)he was searched at the entrance of the market and the metal detector indicated that she was carrying something. But sadly, the explosion went off before she was isolated, killing at least 10 people and injuring many others.”

Tragically, the incident was not an isolated one: This morning, two more suspected female child suicide bombers reportedly blew themselves up in another Nigerian market  in a similar attack.

Three people were killed in that attack yesterday afternoon at an open market selling mobile handsets in the north-east Nigerian town of Potiskum in Yobe state.

Sani Abdu Potiskum, A trader at the market, said the bombers were also about 10 years old.

“I saw their dead bodies,” he said. “They are two young girls of about 10 years of age… you only see the plaited hair and part of the upper torso.”

The attack yesterday afternoon took place in a market in north-east Nigerian town of Potiskum, in Yobe state, an area frequently attacked by Boko Haram. (Photo: ABC News)

No group has immediately claimed responsibility for the horrifying attacks, but the Boko Haram militant group — which gained international notoriety after its mass abduction of almost 200 schoolgirls in April 2014, prompting the #BringBackOurGirls movement — has been increasingly using women and young girls as human bombs, AFP news agency reports.

Boko Haram has also frequently attacked Yobe state, where yesterday’s suicide bombing took place.

A group of Nigerian schoolgirls allegedly abducted by Boko Haram last year, pictured in a chilling video released by the Islamist group.

The group’s continued barbaric treatment of civilians, including women and young girls, remains a poignant international issue; the attack comes only days after Boko Haram’s reported slaughter of more than 2000 people — an attack international human rights organisation Amnesty International labelled the group’s “deadliest massacre yet”.

The group last week razed villages in north-east Nigerea claiming the lives of mostly women, children and the elderly who could not flee in time. Both these attacks come five weeks before the presidential elections in Nigeria, which are likely to trigger even more bloodshed.

Boko Haram, which literally translates “Western education is forbidden,” is a radical Islamist group who have been responsible for hundreds of deaths and the displacement of thousands of Nigerians.

Boko Haram launched its first female suicide attack in June last year in the northern state of Gombe and there have been a series of bombings since.

The market in Maiduguri has been a target of two attacks involving female bombers late last year.

The market has been the target of previous attacks. In July, a bomb explosion rocked the busiest roundabout near the crowded Monday Market in Maiduguri, pictured. (Photo: Stringer/AFP/Getty Image)

The lack of widespread international focus on Boko Haram’s actions has sparked concerns that current international efforts are not enough.

“When it comes to the international community, they express their solidarity but it isn’t really concrete help. We have always said that there should be concern expressed more concretely by the West beyond just expressing their solidarity. They should do more than that,” the Nigerian Archbishop, Ignatius Kaigama, told UK newspaper The Independent.