Two more Chibok girls found eight years after mass abduction | Tellwell Newspaper
Tellwell Newspaper, Abuja – Nigeria:
Nigerian troops have found two of the more than 200 schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram jihadists eight years ago, bringing to 13 the number of the schoolgirls found in the past five months, the military said Friday.
On April 14, 2014, dozens of Boko Haram militants stormed the Chibok girls’ boarding school and herded 276 pupils aged 12 – 17 into trucks in the group’s first school mass abduction which generated global outrage.
Fifty seven of the girls managed to escape by jumping from the trucks shortly after their abduction while 80 were released in exchange for some detained Boko Haram commanders following back-channel talks with the Nigerian government.
A few of the girls were found while more than a hundred remain missing and believed to have been married off to jihadists.
Yana Pogu and Patience Sanki were separately rescued by troops on patrol between September and October, Major-General Christopher Musa, the military commander fighting jihadists in the region, said at a ceremony in the regional capital Maiduguri.
Pogu, 24, was found along with her tlby troops of 21 Special Armoured Brigade during a clearance patrol in Mairari village outside the town of Bama on September 29, Musa told a group of journalists.
She was found in the company of her four children, comprising two boys and two twin girls.
On October 2, troops of 222 Battalion in came across 25-year old Sanki with her two children.
Both Pogu and Sanki had escaped from Boko Haram Sambisa forest enclave which has in the past months came under sustained military offensives that have forced mass surrender from Boko Haram jihadists who have also been under intense pressure from rival ISWAP attacks.
“The troops of Operation Hadin Kai have rescued about 13 Chibok girls so far in the last five months,” said General Musa at the ceremony.
The girls and their children had undertone medical screening by the military in preparation for handing them over to Borno state government to be reunited with their families, the military commander said.
Since the Chibok kidnapping jihadist militants have carried out several mass abductions and deadly attacks on schools in the northeast.
The 13-year jihadist conflict has killed 40,000 people and displaced around two million in the northeast, creating a dire humanitarian crisis in the region.
