US SENDS SEARCH FOR ABDUCTED NIGERIAN GIRLS
Washington, 8 Rajab 1435/7 May 2014 (MINA) – The United States has sent a team of experts to Nigeria to help find nearly 300 schoolgirls abducted last month by the armed group Boko Haram.
US President Barack Obama described the kidnapping of the girls as “heartbreaking” and “outrageous”, soon after residents said the group had seized eight more girls, aged between 12 and 15, again in the embattled northeast.
The first group of girls was taken three weeks ago, and concerns have been mounting about their fate after Boko Haram chief Abubakar Shekau claimed responsibility in a video, saying his group was holding the schoolgirls as “slaves” and threatening to “sell them in the market”.
Shekau criticised the female students for being taught “western education”, which the Islamic group is avidly against. He also warned that his group planned to attack more schools and abduct more girls.
Speaking to US broadcaster ABC, Obama said: “It’s a heartbreaking situation, outrageous situation.” Al Jazeera reported as quoted by Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA).
The team sent to Nigeria consists of “military, law enforcement, and other agencies”, Obama said, and will work to “identify where in fact these girls might be and provide them help”.
US officials have voiced fears that the girls, aged between 16 and 18, have already been smuggled into neighbouring countries, such as Chad and Cameroon. The governments of both denied the girls were in their countries.
Their fate has sparked global outrage and may constitute a crime against humanity according to the UN.
Parents of those taken said Shekau’s video had made an already horrifying situation even worse.
The group had seized eight more girls, aged between 12 and 15, again in the embattled northeast.
Abdullahi Sani, a resident of Warabe, said gunmen had moved “door to door, looking for girls” late on Sunday.
He said the attackers did not kill anyone, which was “surprising”, and suggested that abducting girls was the motive for the attack.
Another Warabe resident, Peter Gombo, told AFP that the military and police had not yet deployed to the area.
“We have no security here. If the gunmen decide to pick our own girls, nobody can stop them.”
Though initially slow to emerge, global outrage has flared over the mass abduction in Chibok, where Boko Haram stormed their school and loaded the girls at gunpoint onto trucks.
Several managed to escape but over 220 girls are still being held, according to police, with other sources saying the number is closer to 300, Al Jazeera quoted by Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA) as reporting.
Egypt’s prestigious Islamic institute Al-Azhar, which runs the main Sunni Islamic university in the region, said harming the girls “completely contradicts the teachings of Islam”. (T/P09/P04).
Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA)