Terrorist group Boko Haram has released a video that appears to show more than 40 kidnapped Nigerian girls.
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‘Presently, some of the girls are crippled, some are terribly sick and some of them, as I had said, died during bombardment by the Nigerian military, ‘ he says.
This undated image taken from video distributed Sunday shows an alleged Boko Haram soldier standing in front of a group of girls alleged to be some of the 276 abducted Chibok schoolgirls held since April 2014, in an unknown location.
Boko Haram, which a year ago pledged loyalty to the Islamic State militant group, has kidnapped hundreds of men, women and children.
But the missing schoolgirls were not among them. One leading member of the Bring Back Our Girls movement told the BBC that she was “terrified” by what she saw in the video.
Ryan Cummings, director at intelligence firm Signal Risk, said the video showed the “desperation” of Shekau’s group. 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.
PRNigeria gathered that the Nigerian Airforce through its Component in Operation Lafiya Dole was focusing on sustaining air operations and providing support to ground troops of the Armed Forces’ strive to rid Nigeria of the Boko Haram insurgency. Human Rights Watch has estimated that Boko Haram has kidnapped more than 10,000 boys from villages across the region over the last three years. One, Amina Ali, was recovered in May, married to a Boko Haram fighter, with a baby. One of these has been recognized by ISIS, which posted an interview between the leader of the group and Abu Masab al-Barnawi.
Esther Yakubu, mother of one of the kidnapped schoolgirls, cries after seeing her daughter Dorcas in a video released by Boko Haram.
We are sending a special message to the parents of the Chibok Girls and the Nigerian Government.
He said: ‘We are nevertheless studying the video clips to examine if the victims died from other causes rather (than) from the allegation of airstrike’. And he warns that if Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari sends troops on a rescue mission, the girls will be slaughtered.
“We are also liaising with other security agencies for their arrest if they fail to turn up”, he said.
Boko Haram has been waging a campaign against the Nigerian government for several years, battling what it calls Western influence.
“The frustration will always be there”. Some people have said they are no more alive.
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Boko Haram has been blamed for some 20,000 deaths and displacing of more than 2.6 million people since 2009.
