Ten years after nearly 300 girls were abducted from a school in the northeast Nigerian town of Chibok by jihadist group Boko Haram, a third of them are still being held and mass kidnappings have become a lucrative industry for criminal gangs across the country. The Chibok girls were kidnapped on April 14, 2014. Raiding a government girls’ secondary school that night, terrorists forced teenage girls onto trucks and drove them away through bush paths to a 128,000-acre forest. Of the 276 abducted girls, those who have regained freedom include 57 who jumped off the trucks and 128 others freed after negotiations with Boko Haram or found in neighboring countries. The most recent rescue happened last year with the return of 5 girls who were found with seven children they had given birth to during captivity. Overall, 21 of the freed girls returned with 34 children, according to a report by Murtala Muhammed Foundation (MMF), a gender and policy advocacy non-profit in Lagos. About a third of the kidnapped girls are believed to still be held by Boko Haram.
SOURCE: SEMAFOR