(Militant video/Site Institute via AP).
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“Military jets have killed some of the girls”, said one of the girls, who was identified by her father, Yakubu Kabu, as his daughter called Dorcas.
A Boko Haram militant stands in front of a group of young women – thought to be those kidnapped from Chinok in 2014 – while calling for its captured fighters to be released. Sunday Aug. 14, 2016. In May, one girl, Amina Ali was rescued. The mother of one of the.
BOKO Haram has released a video appearing to show the Chibok schoolgirls who were kidnapped by the Islamist group in April 2014.
One girl, who calls herself Maida Yakubu, confirms she was picked up at the Chibok government school for girls.
Army spokesman Rabe Abubakar was quoted as saying by PR Nigeria, an official news agency, that the military disputed the claims that the air force had hit the girls.
Speaking in the Hausa language, the gunman says the girls on display will “never” be returned if the government does not release Boko Haram fighters who have been “in detention for ages”.
Weeping, the girl’s mother, Esther Yakubu, told the Associated Press: “The government should just release the militants.All the girls that have been rescued have rescued themselves”.
“Clearly, my status as a Nigerian journalist who has reported extensively, painstakingly and consistently on the Boko Haram menace in the country since 2006 is an open book known to Nigerians and the global community”, he said.
It is understood the girls featured in the video are with a breakaway faction led by group leader Abubakar Shekau.
“We are still reaching out to some parents to see if any can recognise more”, said Jeff Okoroafor, the spokesman for the group, which regularly holds rallies in Abuja, the Nigerian capital, to demand the government find and rescue the girls. Rumors of forcible marriage abound, but there has rarely been proof of life.
He added that authorities also want to talk to the suspects over a recent video released by Boko Haram on the girls.
According to a translation by The Guardian, she says, “To our parents-please be patient.There is no kind of suffering we haven’t seen”. “Let them get ready because every day we shall be marching to the (Presidential) villa”. No one cares for us. “Tell the government to give them [Boko Haram] their people, so we can come home to you”. The end of the video shows dead bodies lying on the ground, said to be those killed by air strikes.
Boko Haram has been forced out of most towns and has turned to assaulting remote villages and using suicide bombers to attack soft targets such as mosques and marketplaces.
Since 2009, Boko Haram has waged an insurgency to carve out an Islamic state in northeast Nigeria that has killed some 15,000 people and displaced more than two million. This is likely to avoid a repeat of an embarrassing hoax a few months after the girls were kidnapped which saw the government negotiate with the wrong people. “It does have a sense of nearly desperation from Boko Haram”.
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Faul reported from Lagos.
