In Nigeria, tales of escapees add to worries about others

Maiduguri, Nigeria — Among the lucky ones, there are pensive smiles but not much laughter.

When the militants came to their school, the men shouted “Allahu akbar!” and announced, “We are Boko Haram,” firing their rifles and threatening casually to kill the teenage girls studying there.

“They said: ‘If you want to die, sit down here. Wewill kill you. If you don’t want to die, you will enter the trucks,’ ” remembered Kuma Ishaku, a soft-spoken 18-year-old in a bright white blouse with silver sparkles.

Frightened and crying, the girls boarded the trucks.

But then Ishaku fled — one of 53 girls from the Chibok Government Girls Second- ary School who escaped their captors.

More than 260 schoolgirls are still missing, and on Wednesday, President Goodluck Jonathan of Nigeria rejected Boko Haram’s demand that he free the group’s imprisoned members around the country in exchange for the girls, according to a British minister who met with him.

“There will be no negotiation with Boko Haram that involves a swap of abducted schoolgirls for prisoners,” Mark Simmonds, Britain’s top official for Africa, told reporters in the Nigerian capital, Abuja.

The government has been at war with the radical Islamist group Boko Haram for years, but the accounts of the girls who escaped show how easily the group was able to

“They said: ‘If you want to die, sit down here. We will kill you. If you don’t want to die, you will enter the trucks.’ ” KUMA ISHAKU, AN 18-YEAR-OLD WHO ESCAPED BOKO HARAM KIDNAPPERS

overrun a state institution in a region already under emergency rule.

Although Nigeria has mounted an aggressive campaign against Boko Haram, often killing civilians in the process, it has been unable to stop the group from at- tacking schools, towns and even the capital. On Wednesday, Boko Haram fighters killed four Nigerian soldiers in an ambush near the girls’ school, according to news reports.

The girls’ accounts are emblematic of the ruthlessness of Boko Haram, adding to the worries over the fate of those who remain in captivity if the president has ruled out a deal to free them.

Some of the schoolgirls who escaped jumped from the trucks taking them through the bush, trying to persuade reluctant classmates to follow them. Others slipped away from the Islamists’ camp while their captors were distracted. The teenage girls wandered directionless in the thick semidesert scrub before kind strangers took them in and back to their village.

They fled after quickly calculating that risking death was better than the grim existence their captors were undoubtedly planning for them. All of them knew about Boko Haram. Their village, Chibok, 80 miles from this state capital, at the end of a dirt track, had been attacked before, like virtually every village around. The girls said they wanted no part of it.

“Yes, yes, I ran into the bush,” said Joy Bishara, a tall 18- year- old in a brown T-shirt with “Ice Box” on the front.

She jumped from one of the trucks as it slowed down.

“I don’t know where I am going,” Bishara said, recalling her hasty reasoning that night. “I think they will kill me. They were telling us, ‘We will kill you.’ ”