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Suspected Boko Haram gunmen kidnap eight girls from village in Nigeria Suspected Boko Haram gunmen kidnap eight girls from village in Nigeria
(about 4 hours later)
Suspected Boko Haram gunmen have kidnapped eight girls aged between 12 and 15 from a village near one of their strongholds in north-east Nigeria, police and residents say. Suspected Boko Haram gunmen have kidnapped eight more girls, aged between eight and 15, in an overnight raid on a village in the sect's stronghold in north-eastern Borno state.
"They were many, and all of them carried guns. They came in two vehicles painted in army colour. They started shooting in our village," said Lazarus Musa, a resident of Warabe, where the attack happened on Monday night. The attack came a day after the group released a video threatening to sell as "slaves" 276 teenage schoolgirls kidnapped three weeks ago.
"Many people tried to run behind the mountain but when they heard gunshots, they came back. The Boko Haram men were entering houses, ordering people out of their houses." In another village, militants shot at least 52 people in a separate revenge attack against residents who were collaborating with security officials.
A police source, who could not be named, said the girls had been taken away on trucks along with looted livestock and food. "They were many, and all of them carried guns," Lazarus Musa, a resident of Waraba where the attack happened on Monday night, told Reuters. "They came in two vehicles painted in army colour. They started shooting in our village. The Boko Haram men were entering houses, ordering people out of their houses."
The Islamist rebels are still holding more than 200 girls they abducted from a secondary school on 14 April. The Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau threatened to sell those girls "on the market" in a video released to the media on Monday. He said Allah had told him to sell the girls. The village of about 2,000 straddles the Gwoza mountain range, the sprawling caves of which stretch into neighbouring Cameroon and are a known hideout of the militants. On Monday, Cameroonian officials said two soldiers were killed in a shootout with Boko Haram militants, in the latest sign of insurgents using porous borders to their advantage.
Their plight and the failure of the Nigerian military to find them has drawn international attention to an escalating Islamic extremist insurrection that has killed more than 1,500 people so far this year. Relatives said they had received frantic calls from family members who walked overnight from Waraba to nearby towns.
The United Nations warned Boko Haram, whose name means "western education is sinful", that there was no statute of limitations if they carried out their leader's threat to sell the girls. "The village is deserted now," said Marcus James, a resident who moved to the capital, Abuja, last year to escape more frequent and brutal cross-border raids. "The last I heard from my relatives is that around two dozen gunmen had been shooting for about three hours. At that time, my family called to say they were hiding in the bush, and I haven't heard from them since."
"We warn the perpetrators that there is an absolute prohibition against slavery and sexual slavery in international law. These can under certain circumstances constitute crimes against humanity," the UN human rights spokesman Rupert Colville told a news briefing in Geneva. Nigeria's army has struggled against a fleet-footed enemy which is able to launch lightning raids before disappearing into rugged mountain and desert terrain.
"That means anyone responsible can be arrested, charged, prosecuted, and jailed at any time in the future. So just because they think they are safe now, they won't necessarily be in two years, five years or 10 years' time," he said. On Sunday, Boko Haram members killed at least 52 after spraying a market with rocket-propelled grenades and gunfire in the village of Gamborou, also in Bono state, residents told the Guardian.
He also urged Nigeria's federal and local authorities to work together to rescue the girls. "They just came in and started shooting. They said we locals had been collaborating with the security officials because it is true some of us went to the military post and told them where they keep their guns," said Abubakar Garba, a taxi driver in Gamborou. "Even now we are trying to recover some bodies, there were so many of them. The market smells of death and smoke."
The military's inability to find the girls has led to protests in the north-east, Abuja and Lagos, the commercial capital. More are expected on Tuesday in Abuja, just as delegates will be collecting their badges to allow them entry to the hotel where a World Economic Forum meeting on Africa will take place from Wednesday to Friday. A local commissioner said residents and vigilante groups had last week directed soldiers to a series of insurgent safe houses where arms and ammunition were stashed. The militants returned on Sunday, after the soldiers had left the village. "They are just animals. Anyone who is against them is their enemy," the commissioner said.
A bomb in Abuja killed 19 people last week, another event that has embarrassed the government before the forum. The five-year insurgency in the country's north-east has claimed more than 4,000 lives and forced almost half a million people to flee their homes, according to International Crisis Group. The attacks have prompted international protests in New York and London.
The latest assaults come as Nigeria prepares to hold the World Economic Forum in Abuja, where two bombs in the last three weeks have killed at least 95. Roadblocks and security checkpoints have choked traffic across the captial's glitzy centre as the government seeks to reassure heads of states and dignitaries of their security.
Ordinary citizens have been less convinced. Early on Tuesday, jittery parents in the suburb of Nyanya rushed to pull their children out of school after armed men hijacked an empty private school bus.
"I'm taking my son out of school because his life is better than any education. He can stay at home until all this Boko Haram problem is resolved. I don't care if he misses school – I don't want to imagine the pain of those parents whose schoolchildren were abducted," said Rose Rotimi, who joined a crowd of parents and schoolchildren navigating the traffic. She said the headmistress of the school had told parents not to return until official security was provided.
The scale and audacity of the 15 April mass abductions in remote Chibok – several truckloads of militants were able to run rampant for almost five hours – has shocked Nigerians and provoked a series of protests. In Abuja, about 500 people marched through the streets wearing red T-shirts and singing protest songs.
"We want to know what happens to all the money being spent on security every year. What is it for?" said one protestor, referring to the government's $6bn annual security budget.
Officials have scrambled to provide explanations. On Sunday Patience Jonathan, the president's wife, accused local officials of being partially responsible for the attacks by opening Chibok school, even though others in the area had shut down.
African leaders have rallied around Nigeria. "All of us are fathers, and I could just imagine that my daughter could be one of them," said Ghana's president, John Dramani Mahama, who added he had written a letter on behalf of 14 other west African nations offering assistance.
The United Nations warned that any parties participating in the buying or selling of the schoolgirls could face prosecution under international law. "We warn the perpertrators that there is an absolute prohibition against slavery and sexual slavery in international law," the UN rights spokesperson Rupert Colville said. "So just because they think they are safe now, they won't necessarily be in two years, five years or 10 years' time," he told a news briefing in Geneva.
William Hague, the British foreign secretary, said the UK was offering Nigeria assistance in recovering the girls who were being "treated as spoils of war by Boko Haram".
The US has operated a drone base in neighbouring Niger since 2012, but Africa's most populous country has long rebuffed requests for them to operate on its territory. The White House spokesman Jay Carney said Barack Obama had been briefed on the situation several times and the US viewed the abductions as an outrage.
Carney said a team – including military and law enforcement personnel capable of sharing with the Nigerians expertise in intelligence, investigations, hostage negotiating and victim assistance – would head to Nigeria to help search for the teenagers.
He said John Kerry had reiterated the offer during a conversation on Tuesday with Goodluck Jonathan, and that John Kerry and Obama would discuss the issue on Tuesday afternoon.
Meanwhile, for parents awaiting news, each day stretches on. "I don't remember what it is like to sleep peacefully. All I can think is that it is now three weeks. My child has been living with those terrorists for three weeks. No parent should have to endure this," said a pastor whose daughter was among the kidnapped.
Additional reporting by Abdulaziz Abdulaziz in Abuja