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KANO, Nigeria — A child bride forced into marriage in Nigeria killed a groom and three of his friends with a poisoned meal, police said Thursday.

Fourteen-year-old Wasila Umaru was married last week to 35-year-old Umaru Sani, according to assistant superintendent Musa Magaji Majia.

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Over the weekend, the groom invited a dozen friends to celebrate at his Ungwar Yansoro village, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) from the northern city of Kano.

The teenager told police she bought rat poison at a village market and used it to prepare a dish of rice.

“The suspect confessed to committing the crime and said she did it because she was forced to marry a man she did not love,” Majia told The Associated Press.

The groom and a friend died the same day, and two other victims died later in the hospital.

Umaru is cooperating with police and likely will be charged with culpable homicide, according to Majia.

Child marriage is common in Nigeria and especially in the mainly Muslim and impoverished north, where the numbers increase in times of drought because a bride price is paid and it means one less mouth to feed. Fifty percent of Nigerian girls living in rural areas are married before they turn 18, according to the U.N. children’s agency. That’s a lot of child brides in a country of some 170 million people of whom half are under 18.