Nigeria releases photos of rescued women
Hundreds more saved from Boko Haram’s camps: military
LAGOS, NIGERIA — They look calm, subdued. One young woman with a purple hijab covering her head and upper body holds a baby. Few know what horrors they may have been through or witnessed.
The military has released the first photos of what it says are some of the hundreds of women and children that troops freed in recent days in the Sambisa Forest amid heavy fighting.
Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, whose term ends this month, said Thursday the Sambisa Forest is the last refuge for Boko Haram militants and he pledged to “hand over a Nigeria completely free of terrorist strongholds.”
The military says it is screening the girls and women to find out what villages they came from. Some women the soldiers tried to rescue even shot at their rescuers, a military spokesman has said, indicating that some might now identify with Boko Haram after months of captivity and forced marriages. It also remains unclear if some of the women had willingly joined Boko Haram, or are family members of fighters.
The photos, which the military said were taken on Wednesday and Thursday, show 20 or so women, children and babies looking generally healthy physically, though one child is thin.
There has been no announcement yet on whether any of those rescued are the students kidnapped from the Chibok school a year ago, a mass kidnapping that outraged much of the world.
Some photos were taken in an open courtyard with a high wall and leafy trees beyond. A military man in a flight suit, an assault rifle held by his side, stands among them. A young military medic with blue rubber gloves and a surgical mask dangling from his ears appears to be checking several of the children.
Muhammad Gavi, a spokesman for a self-defence group that fights Boko Haram, said some of the women and girls who were freed are pregnant, citing information from group members who have seen the females.
The Nigerian military first reported rescuing almost 300 women and children in the Sambisa Forest on Tuesday after deploying ground troops into the forest more than a week ago. Army spokesman Col. Sani Usman said on Thursday that another 100-plus girls and more than 50 additional women have also been rescued.
Several lives were lost, he said in a statement, including that of a soldier and a woman, during shootouts in nine separate extremist camps in the forest.
Some captives have reportedly become indoctrinated into believing the group’s Islamic extremist ideology, while others established strong emotional attachments to militants they had been forced to marry.
The military initially appeared incapable of curbing Boko Haram as the insurgents took control of a large swath of northeast Nigeria last year and declared it an Islamic caliphate. That changed when the military received helicopter gunships and heavy arms and some neighbouring nations launched an offensive against Boko Haram at the end of January.
President Jonathan lost March 28 elections, in part because of the military failures and a perceived uncaring attitude to the plight of victims of Boko Haram. Former military dictator Muhammadu Buhari won at the polls, and becomes president on May 29.