63 kidnapped women, girls escape in Nigeria
More than 60 Nigerian girls and women abducted by Islamic extremists two weeks ago have escaped, officials say.
Had denied abductions »
63 abducted females escape extremists in Nigeria
By HARUNA UMAR and MICHELLE FAUL
1 hour ago
TouchVision
NIGERIAN WOMEN ESCAPE BOKO HARAM
MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (AP) —
More than 60 Nigerian girls and women abducted by Islamic extremists
two weeks ago have managed to escape, officials said Monday, though more
than 200 girls who were kidnapped in April remain missing.
Nigerian
security forces and federal government officials had denied reports of
the mass abduction from three villages in the northeast state of Borno
on June 22.
Chibok local
government chairman Pogu Bitrus said Monday he had verified that about
60 women and girls escaped on Thursday and Friday by sending a
representative who met with some of the escapees and their families at
the hospital in Lassa, a town in the neighboring Damboa local government
area.
Vigilante leader Abbas
Gava in Maiduguri, capital of Borno state, said Sunday that vigilantes
in the area told him 63 women and girls escaped Friday while their
captors were engaged in a major attack on a military barracks and police
headquarters in Damboa town.
Small-scale kidnappings by Boko
Haram extremists had been going on for months when they drew
international condemnation for the abductions of more than 200
schoolgirls from a school in Chibok town of Borno state on April 15.
Some 219 of those girls still are missing.
The government and military failure to rescue them has attracted criticism at home and abroad.
Boko
Haram is demanding the release of detained fighters in exchange for the
girls. Nigeria's President Goodluck Jonathan reportedly has refused to
consider a prisoner swap.Amid the stalemate, Bitrus said that attacks have increased around Chibok and that Boko Haram has taken over some villages in the area and is threatening to take over others. The Kibaku Area Development Association, a local residents' association of which he is also chairman, reported that 19 villages have been attacked since the April 15 abductions, with more than 229 people killed and about 100 seriously wounded.
In 90 percent of cases
there had been advance warning of the attacks — as happened in the
Chibok kidnappings — yet the military had taken no action, the
association said in a statement Friday.
"Security
and defense is mainly provided by the local vigilante (who are
ill-equipped) and the police while the soldiers in Chibok sit by and
watch villagers being helplessly massacred in their homes, farms and in
places of worship," the association said in a statement.
The association called for help from the United Nations."The inability or unwillingness of the federal government to provide adequate security to Chibok (Kibaku) nation following the abduction of the girls leaves us with no option than to call on the United Nations to use its apparatus to come to our aid and protect us from the imminent annihilation as a people," the statement said.
The Associated Press had originally quoted witnesses and a local official reporting that about 90 people including about 30 boys had been kidnapped from three villages on June 22. Bitrus said those who escaped were interviewed and they said no males were abducted with them. Security forces and federal officials had denied any kidnapping and it is impossible to safely or independently verify reports from an area were Boko Haram is carrying out near-daily attacks and the military often shuts down cell phone service.
Some officials also had questioned the mass abduction of the Chibok girls, which was confirmed last month by a presidential investigating committee.
Nigeria's
military has reported some successes in recent days. Soldiers killed at
least 50 insurgents and lost five troops and the commander officer when
they repulsed an attack by hundreds of Boko Haram fighters on a
military base and divisional police headquarters in Damboa, the Defense
Ministry said on Sunday.
It was a rare victory for the military
whose bases, including major barracks, have been overrun as soldiers
have fled in previous attacks.On Friday the Defense Ministry reported the arrests of three "suspected female terrorists" whom it accused of luring women, especially widows and young girls, by offering Boko Haram fighters as suitors.
It
said the arrests of recruiters for "the female wing of the terrorist's
group" followed a failed suicide bombing by a woman who blew herself up
in front of a military camp in northeast Gombe last week.
More
than 2,000 people have died so far this year in the 5-year-old Islamic
uprising, compared to an estimated 3,600 in the four previous years.
___
Faul reported from Lagos, Nigeria.
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