Chibok girl snatched by Boko Haram found pregnant and traumatized, relative says
Soldiers have found one of the girls kidnapped by Boko Haram from a boarding school in Chibok town, her uncle said Wednesday, describing her as pregnant and traumatized but otherwise fine.
Amina Ali Nkeki is the first of the 219 so-called Chibok girls to be freed since the mass abduction that grabbed attention around the world more than two years ago.
Community leader Pogu Bitrus said other Chibok girls may also have been rescued by soldiers hunting down Boko Haram in the remote northeastern Sambisa Forest on Tuesday night. He said he was working with officials to establish their identities.
Boko Haram Islamic extremists stormed and firebombed the Government Girls Secondary School at Chibok on April 14, 2014, and seized 276 girls who were preparing to write science exams. Dozens escaped within hours, but 219 remained missing.
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The inability of Nigeria’s government and military to rescue them led, in part, to the electoral defeat of President Goodluck Jonathan last year.
Yakubu Nkeki said his niece was found wandering in the forest. He said the 19-year-old — she was 17 when she was abducted — was brought to Chibok on Tuesday night so that her identity could be verified and that she could be reunited with her mother. Her father died while she was held captive, he said.
He said the soldiers then took the young woman away, apparently to a military camp in the town of Damboa.
It’s not known how many thousands of girls, boys and young women have been kidnapped by Boko Haram in a nearly 7-year-old insurgency that has killed approximately 20,000 people and spread across Nigeria’s borders.
Nigeria’s military has reported freeing thousands this year as they have forced the extremists from towns and into strongholds in the sprawling Sambisa Forest.
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