Parents mourn their daughters taken in the kidnapping World;s big powers, including the United States and China, have joined in the se...
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| Parents mourn their daughters taken in the kidnapping |
World;s big powers, including the United States and China, have joined in the search for the more than 200 schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram Islamists.
Boko Haram Islamists have killed hundreds in the country's northeast this week.
Amid global outrage over the kidnapping of the teenagers, the United States, Britain and France are sending specialist teams to Nigeria.
China promised to supply "any useful information acquired by its satellites and intelligence services" to Nigeria.
The police on Wednesday 07 May, 2014 offered $300,000 (€215,000) for information leading to the rescue of these girls
West joins hostage search.
US President Barack Obama has described the Chibok abductions as "heartbreaking" and "outrageous", and announced that a team of military experts had been sent to help Nigeria's rescue mission. Michelle Obama expressed sympathy for the schoolgirls, in a personal message on Twitter
"Our prayers are with the missing Nigerian girls and their families. It's time to #BringBackOurGirls," said the US First Lady on her @FLOTUS account, with a picture of her solemnly holding a sign saying #BringBackOurGirls" scribbled in black on white paper. The tweet was signed "mo," meaning she wrote it herself, and it was retweeted more than 8,500 times in just a few hours.
British Prime Minister David Cameron condemned the kidnappers as "pure evil" and said a small team of planning and coordinating specialists would head to Nigeria as soon as possible. Britain is expected to send Abuja-based liaison officers from the SAS special forces to help the rescue mission, the Times reported Thursday.
France and China also pledged assistance.
World meet overshadowed : As well as mounting pressure over the kidnappings, Nigeria has been hit by a spate of bombings. Just a few hours before the mass abduction in Chibok, a car bombing at a bus station on the outskirts of Abuja killed 75 people. A copycat bombing at the same station killed 19 people on May 1.
Jonathan had hoped that a World Economic Forum summit which opened in Abuja Wednesday 07 May 2014 would highlight Nigeria's economic progress.
Meeting Jonathan in Abuja ahead of what has been dubbed "Africa's Davos", Chinese Premier Li Keqiang pledged stronger cooperation with Nigeria, Africa's top oil producer, but public focus has remained fixed on Boko Haram.
The latest insurgent attack targeted the town of Gamboru Ngala on the border with Cameroon, where gunmen this week razed scores of buildings and fired on civilians as they tried to flee.
Area Senator Ahmed Zanna put the death toll at 300, citing information provided by locals, in an account supported by numerous residents.
Zanna said the town had been left unguarded because soldiers based there had been redeployed north towards Lake Chad in an effort to rescue the kidnapped girls.
Nigeria's response to the kidnappings has been widely criticised, including by activists and parents of the hostages who say the military's search operation has been inept so far. President GoodluckJonathan's administration has sought to appear more engaged with the plight of the hostages in recent days, especially after Boko Haram chief Abubakar Shekau released a video threatening to sell the girls as "slaves".
In a second kidnapping, 11 more girls aged 12 to 15 were seized Sunday from Gwoza, an area not far from Chibok and also in Boko Haram's Borno base.
The group's five-year uprising has killed thousands across Africa's most populous country and top economy, with many questioning whether Nigeria has the capacity to contain the violence.
Boko Haram militant makes more threats.
Charred bodies, throats cut
Islamist fighters riding in armoured trucks and on motorcycles stormed Gamboru Ngala after midday on Monday. The extremists overran the town, making it too dangerous for locals to immediately return, survivors said. When the militants left, residents discovered their town "littered" with dead bodies, Musa Abba, a witness, told AFP
Nigerian Boko Haram militants 'seeking prisoner swap to return schoolgirls'Exclusive: Boko Haram militants plan to use kidnapped Nigerian schoolgirls as bargaining chips to free comrades rather than kill them, former mediator tells The Telegraph
Members of civil society groups protest the abduction of Chibok school girls
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| Members of civil society groups in Abuja protest the abduction of the Chibok school girls. |
Telegraph.
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| Shehu Sani, right, at a procession in Kaduna to highlight the girls' plight |
Shehu Sani, who brokered face-to-face peace talks with the group, said he believed that the video in which Boko Haram threatened to sell the girls as "slaves" was proof that they planned to use them as bargaining chips rather than kill them.
Abubakar Shekau claimed he was going to sell the girls
The video was released on Monday and featured Boko Haram's leader, Abubakar Sheka u, gloatingly claiming that he would sell the captives "in the market" to anyone wishing to take them as wives.
But while the broadcast appalled the captives' families and sparked worldwide outrage, Mr Sani saw it as a veiled attempt to reach out for a trade with the Nigerian government.
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"If you look at the fact that these girls have already been in captivity for some three weeks, then it is possible to detect a conciliatory tone in this statement from Shekau – he is not saying he is going to kill the girls," Mr Sani said.
"From my knowledge of the group, to have him saying that he will sell them is proof that this issue can be resolved. The group is most likely to want to attach some kind of conditions to the girls being released, such as the freeing of some of their own prisoners."
Mr Sani spoke as international efforts to help the Nigerian government free the girls gathered pace. On Wednesday, Britain said it would send a small team of experts to Nigeria "as soon as possible".
Nana Shettima, the wife of Borno Governor, weeps as she speaks with school girls who escaped (AP)
While the team is expected to concentrate on planning and giving advice to local officials rather than any ground operation to free the girls, Downing Street is also understood to have ordered locally-based liaison officers from the SAS to help the rescue mission, according to The Times.
British special forces previously took part with their Nigerian counterparts in an attempted rescue of a British hostage, Chris McManus, who was killed by his captors during the operation to free him in March 2012. He had been kidnapped by a gang said to be affiliated to Nigerian Islamic militants.
The Nigerian police have also offered a $300,000 (£230,000) reward for information leading to the rescue of the girls.
Meanwhile, further details emerged of an attack earlier this week by Boko Haram in the remote town of Gamboru Ngala, close to the border with Cameroon, in which up to 300 people are believed to have been killed.
Musa Abba, a local resident, told the AFP news agency that Islamist fighters who stormed the town driving armoured trucks and motorbikes left it "littered" with dead bodies.
Another source told AFP: "Some of the bodies were charred. It was horrific. People had their throats slit, others were shot."
Ahmed Zanna, a local senator, claimed that the town had been left unguarded because soldiers based there had been redeployed north towards Lake Chad in an effort to rescue the kidnapped girls.
Some reports claim that they have been trafficked over the border into neighbouring Chad and Cameroon.
While the Nigerian government now has promises of help from Britain, America and other world powers in trying to locate the girls, Mr Sani, the negotiator, warned that it could be dangerous to try to free them by force.
"A military action towards rescuing them is most likely to turn very tragic," he said. "My personal belief is that if we can get clerics from northern Nigeria and members of the insurgent group who have already been imprisoned together in dialogue, then some channels for negotiation could be opened. Having military chiefs running everything is not going to help."
Mr Sani, who describes himself as a human-rights activist, spent several years in jail during Nigeria's period of military dictatorship, which ended in the late 1990s.
In 2011, he brokered peace talks with the group in the city of Maiduguri in northern Nigeria, where Boko Haram first started up around a decade ago.
The talks, attended by the former Nigerian president, Olusegun Obasanjo, involved face-to-face dialogue with senior militants in the city. The militants insisted that the parties met in the ruins of their former mosque, which had been demolished in an operation by the Nigerian military.
However, the talks failed to win the backing of the Nigerian government, which favoured a "military" solution to the crisis, according to Mr Sani.
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