05/25/2014 11:15mayank

Indications emerged yesterday, that the abducted Chibok schoolgirls may soon be rescued as the massive troops deployed to the area are making positive progress.

According to the Co-ordinator, National Information Centre, Mike Omeri, the efforts of officers and men of Nigeria’s defence forces as well as the police and the Department of State Service, DSS, were yielding positive result.

When reminded that the Chibok girls have been in the kidnappers’s den for over 40days, Omeri hinted, “By God’s grace, we are looking at a matter of days”.

http://dailypost.ng/2014/05/25/chibok-girls-will-rescued-matter-days-omeri/

   05/22/2014 06:08kruijs

President Barack Obama is putting American troops on the ground to help find the schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram

The U.S. has deployed 80 American troops to Chad to assist in the search for more than 200 Nigerian schoolgirls kidnapped by the militant group Boko Haram last month, President Barack Obama told Congress on Wednesday.

http://time.com/108025/nigeria-chad-boko-haram-american-troops-obama/

   05/21/2014 20:33kruijs

Boko Haram made the decision to abduct as many schoolgirls as they could get their hands on (nearly 300, although no one is sure of the exact number). They weren’t looking for ransom money, although that may have been part of it. Their goals were political: to extract concessions from the Nigerian government, to bargain for the release of Boko Haram members in prison, and to once again underscore just how dangerous they are – and how powerless Nigeria is to stop them.

Boko Haram has certainly achieved the latter. That they can smuggle away nearly 300 screaming schoolgirls, without anyone even putting up a fight, is an extraordinary show of strength. It’s been six weeks, and still no one knows where the girls are (never mind get them back, we’ve got to find them first). The Nigerian government has been shown to be helplessly unable to deal with the threat.

http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2014-05-20-bringbackourgirls-and-the-trouble-with-hashtag-diplomacy/

   05/12/2014 18:11kruijs

A new clue about the fate of hundreds of girls kidnapped by an Islamist extremist group in Nigeria emerged Monday with the release of a video apparently showing many of the girls and new threats to “sell them” and “hold them as slaves” until Boko Haram members are released from prison.

If genuine, it would be the first public glimpse of the girls since they were seized on April 14 from a school in Chibok, an isolated village some 80 miles from this regional capital in Nigeria’s far northeast, where an Islamist insurgency has bedeviled the authorities for years.

The video shows dozens of girls dressed in head scarves and long gowns that cover their bodies but reveal their faces. They are praying and seated cross-legged in the type of scrubland that is pervasive in this region, not far from the Sahara Desert. One of the girls is shown reciting the opening of the Quran; three express allegiance to Islam; two say they had converted from Christianity.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/13/world/africa/boko-haram-video-kidnapped-nigerian-girls.html

   05/09/2014 13:19kruijs

American experts have arrived in Nigeria to help track down the 276 schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram.

“Our inter-agency team is hitting the ground in Nigeria,” Secretary of State John Kery said late Thursday. They are going to be working with Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan’s government to return the girls to their families and their communities, he added.

“We are also going to do everything possible to counter the menace of Boko Haram,” Kerry said, referring to the extremist Islamist group which has claimed responsibility for kidnapping the girls from their school in the northeastern village of Chibok on April 14.

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/missing-nigeria-schoolgirls/u-s-experts-arrive-nigeria-hunt-girls-taken-boko-haram-n101126

   05/07/2014 12:45kruijs

Nigerian Islamist militant group Boko Haram is reported to have struck again in Borno State, killing hundreds of people in fresh attacks, as the US joins the ongoing hunt for hundreds of abducted school girls.

On Monday night in the town of Gamboru Ngala near Nigeria's border with Cameroon, residents said that heavily armed Boko Haram militants gunned down civilians and set fire to buildings including a police station.

A local senator said hundreds were dead. However, a Nigerian military spokesman said the incident was unconfirmed.

"About 300 persons were confirmed dead after the incident, with several others injured. Almost all the houses in the communities were destroyed by the hoodlums who threw IEDs [improvised explosive devices] at the buildings," Senator Ahmed Zannah, who is from the area, told BBC Hausa.

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/nigeria-boko-haram-kills-300-fresh-attack-us-joins-hunt-abducted-girls-1447463

   05/07/2014 10:50kruijs

President Obama said Tuesday that the U.S. would do everything possible to help Nigeria find nearly 300 teenage girls missing since they were kidnapped from school three weeks ago by an Islamic extremist group that has threatened to sell them.

Mr. Obama said the immediate priority was finding the girls, but that in the longer term, the Boko Haram group must also be dealt with.

CBS News correspondent Margaret Brennan said Secretary of State John Kerry told Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan on Tuesday that the U.S. would send a team of hostage negotiators and intelligence experts to help in the search.

The technical experts heading to Nigeria will include U.S. military and law enforcement personnel skilled in intelligence, investigations, hostage negotiating, information sharing and victim assistance, as well as officials with expertise in other areas, White House spokesman Jay Carney said.

U.S. armed forces were not being sent, Carney note.

But Amnesty International's Adotei Akwei told CBS News that the delay makes the chances of finding the girls slim.

"Some of them have been trafficked out of Nigeria, into Cameroon or Chad," said Akwei. "I suspect that they are being used as sex slaves... that's unfortunately what happens when girls are abducted."

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/nigeria-accepts-us-help-to-rescue-girls-kidnapped-by-boko-haram-too-late/