About 80 kidnapped girls freed in Nigeria
Abduction of 300 schoolgirls defined war on Boko Haram
DAKAR, SENEGAL— Dozens of the nearly 300 schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram militants just over three years ago in the Nigerian village of Chibok have been released, a senior Nigerian official said Saturday.
If confirmed, the release of the girls is by far the biggest breakthrough in a tragedy that has come to define the nearly eight-year war against Boko Haram, the Islamist militant group that has burned, killed and kidnapped its way across parts of West Africa, killing thousands and causing millions to flee for their lives.
About 80 of the girls were released near Banki, a town in the northeast of the country along the border with Cameroon, and were starting a long journey to Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, according to an official who was not authorized to speak to the media. They first will be airlifted to Maiduguri, a major city in the northeast where Boko Haram is most active.
To much of the world, the mass abduction of nearly 300 girls from a Nigerian school three years ago was a shocking introduction to the atrocities and humanitarian crises caused by Boko Haram, galvanizing global attention to a militant group that had been terrorizing Nigerians for years.
An international campaign, led by Nigerians but joined by prominent figures like Michelle Obama, demanded immediate action to bring the girls home. But the leader of Boko Haram scoffed at the world’s sudden attention to Nigeria’s upheaval and shrugged off the global outrage, vowing to sell the girls in the market and “give their hands in marriage because they are our slaves.”
“We would marry them out at the age of 9,” warned the group’s leader, Abubakar Shekau.
Until now, only about 22 of the girls have been found or released. And well over 100 girls are still thought to be in Boko Haram’s clutches, many possibly married to fighters or forced to become combatants themselves.
Beyond that, many hundreds, if not thousands, of other girls and boys have been abducted by Boko Haram over the years. Children as young as 7 or 8 have been used as suicide bombers by the group.