Boko Haram has virtually turned babies into bombs.

To avoid detection that could enable the authorities to stop them, members of the Islamist extremist group based in Nigeria are now using babies cradled by female jihadists sent to carry out suicide terrorist attacks on civilians, BBC News reported.

One such attack took place on Jan. 13 in the town of Madagali in Adamawa State, when two women suicide bombers disguised as mothers cradling babies were able to pass through a vigilante checkpoint. Moments later, the two female jihadists detonated the bombs they carried on their suicide vests, instantly killing themselves, the babies, and four other people, officials said.

Two other Boko Haram female suicide bombers, who were not carrying children, were stopped at the checkpoint. Nevertheless, they were still able to detonate the explosives they carried but killed only themselves.

Boko Haram has been carrying out terrorist attacks in Nigeria since 2009, sometimes using kidnapped girls as bombers. Their avowed aim is to drive out all Christians from the African country, according to The Christian Post.

Meanwhile, the Nigerian news portal Naij reported that the Boko Haram has destroyed at least 900 churches since its emergence.

The information came from the youth wing of the Christian Association of Nigeria, which called on the federal government to rebuild the destroyed churches.

Last month, another Boko Haram suicide bombing left 56 people dead in Maiduguri, according to the watchdog group International Christian Concern (ICC). The terrorist group used two young teenage girls in the attack, the ICC said, adding that the girls could have come from the nearby Sambisa forest, where Boko Haram is known to be keeping the girls it kidnapped from the town of Chibok in April 2014.

Some of the girls managed to escape from the clutches of the jihadist group and have recounted their horrifying ordeal. One of them, 20-year-old Amina (not her real name), told the Daily Mirror last month that she endured five years of harrowing captivity inside the Sambisa Forest among about 200 women.

She revealed that she was forced to marry three Boko Haram fighters successively, one after another after the first two were killed in clashes. All three men repeatedly raped and impregnated her, making her a mother of three children, before she was able to escape with her children, one of whom died on the road to freedom.