Nigerian Military Says It Knows Location of Abducted Girls
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Version 0 of 1. Nigeria’s military knows the location of nearly 300 girls abducted from school seven weeks ago by Boko Haram extremists, the top commander of the country’s armed forces said Monday. The assertion by the commander, Air Chief Marshal Alex Badeh, was the first time the Nigerian government had publicly claimed to know the whereabouts of the missing girls, whose abduction has provoked global outrage and criticism of the Nigeria military for having failed to find and rescue them. In remarks carried by the National News Agency of Nigeria, Air Chief Marshal Badeh, the chief of the defense staff, also said the military would not undertake any rescue attempt that would endanger the lives of the girls. Their captors have publicly threatened to sell them into slavery or forced marriage. Air Chief Marshal Badeh spoke to what news agencies described as a supportive crowd of Nigerians in Abuja, the Nigerian capital, as part of what appeared to be an orchestrated campaign by the military to rebut the criticism over its handling of the mass kidnapping of the girls, who were all seized from the remote northeast village of Chibok on April 14 as they were taking school exams. “We want our girls back,” Air Chief Marshal Badeh was quoted as saying. “I can tell you that our military can and will do it, but where they are held, can we go there with force? Nobody should say the Nigerian military does not know what it is doing. We can’t kill our girls in the name of trying to get them back.” He was further quoted as saying: “The good news for the parents of the girls is that we know where they are, but we cannot tell you. We cannot come and tell you the military secret. Just leave us alone, we are working to get the girls back.” In a further retort to critics, Air Chief Marshal Badeh said, “Anybody castigating the military, definitely there is something wrong with him.” He did not go into any detail in his quoted remarks about whether the girls remained in one group or had been split up. At least four countries, including the United States, have joined in the hunt for the girls by providing assistance to the Nigerian military, which has been described privately by Western intelligence agents and diplomats as bumbling and ineffective in the fight against Boko Haram, a ruthless insurgent group with ties to Al Qaeda that has repeatedly struck with impunity in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country. In the weeks since the girls were seized, dozens of Nigerians in the group’s northeast regional stronghold have been killed by Boko Haram militants. There was no corroboration of Air Chief Marshal Badeh’s assertion about the girls’ location from American officials, who have sent drones to survey the Sambisa Forest in northeast Nigeria, a 37,000-square-mile area where the girls are thought to be held captive. |