Boko Haram
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Boko Haram fighters killed older boys and men in front of their families before taking women and children into the forest where many died of hunger and disease, freed captives said on Sunday after they were brought to a government refugee camp. The Nigerian army rescued hundreds of women and children last week from the Islamist fighters in northern Nigeria's Sambisa Forest in a major operation that has turned international attention to the plight of hostages. After days on the road in pickup trucks, hundreds were released on Sunday into the care of authorities at a refugee camp in the eastern town of Yola to be fed and treated for injuries. They have been able to speak to reporters for the first time. "They didn't allow us to move an inch," said one of the freed women, Asabe Umaru, describing her captivity in the forest. "If you needed the toilet, they followed you. We were kept in one place. We were under bondage. "We thank God to be alive today. We thank the Nigerian army for saving our lives," she added.
Two hundred seventy-five women and children, some with heads or limbs in bandages, arrived in the camp late on Saturday. Nearly 700 kidnap victims were freed from the Islamist group's forest stronghold since Tuesday, with the latest group of 234 women and children liberated on Friday. "When we saw the soldiers we raised our hands and shouted for help. Boko Haram who were guarding us started stoning us so we would follow them to another hideout, but we refused because we were sure the soldiers would rescue us," Umaru, a 24 year-old mother of two, told Reuters. The prisoners suffered constant malnutrition and disease, she said. "Every day we witnessed the death of one of us and waited for our turn." Another freed captive, Cecilia Abel, said her husband and first son had been killed in her presence before the militia forced her and her remaining eight children into the forest.
For two weeks before the military arrived she had barely eaten. "We were fed only ground dry maize in the afternoons. It was not good for human consumption," she said. "Many of us that were captured died in Sambisa Forest. Even after our rescue about 10 died on our way to this place." The freed prisoners were fed bread and mugs of tea as soon as they arrived at the government camp. Nineteen were in hospital for special attention, Dr. Mohammed Aminu Sulieman of the Adamawa State Emergency Management Agency told Reuters. Amnesty International estimates the insurgents, who are intent on bringing western Africa under Islamist rule, have taken more than 2,000 women and girls captive since the start of 2014. Many have been used as cooks, sex slaves or human shields. The prisoners freed so far do not appear to include any of more than 200 schoolgirls snatched from school dormitories in Chibok town a year ago, an incident that drew global attention to the six-year-old insurgency.
Umaru said her group of prisoners never came in contact with the missing Chibok girls. Nigerian troops alongside armies from neighbouring Chad, Cameroon and Niger have won back swathes of territory from the fighters in the last couple of months. Last year, the group exerted influence over an area bigger than Belgium. But a counter-attack launched in January has pushed them into Sambisa, a nature reserve. While the Nigerian army is confident it has the group cornered, a final push to clear them from the area has been curtailed by landmines. President Goodluck Jonathan, who relinquishes power later in May after his election defeat to Muhammadu Buhari, has promised to hand over a Nigeria "free of terrorist strongholds". Rampant corruption and a failure to stamp out the uprising in the north were factors that cost Jonathan the election won by Buhari, a former military ruler.
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Nigeria has rescued 234 women and children from a Boko Haram Takfiri militant stronghold in the restive northeastern state of Borno, the army says. The hostages were rescued on Thursday as part of an ongoing operation through the Kawuri and Konduga end of the Sambisa Forest, the military said in a Friday statement. Military spokesman Chris Olukolade said that the operation in the forest is continuing with the aim of saving more hostages and destroying all terrorist camps.
The Nigerian military freed 293 women and children in the Sambisa Forest on Tuesday and over 160 other hostages in the following days. Boko Haram militants regularly abduct women and girls during their attacks on various Nigerian cities. On April 14, 2014, the militants kidnapped 276 girls from a secondary school in the town of Chibok in Borno. Fifty-seven of the girls managed to escape but 219 remained in captivity, reportedly in the Sambisa Forest.
It is still unclear if the missing Chibok schoolgirls are among those rescued in recent days.Boko Haram says its goal is to overthrow the Nigerian government. It has claimed responsibility for a number of deadly shooting attacks and bombings in various parts of the country since the beginning of its militancy in 2009, which has so far left about 15,000 people dead and displaced about 1.5 million.
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Government troops in Nigeria have rescued about 160 more hostages from Boko Haram's Sambisa Forest stronghold in northeast Nigeria. Sani Usman, a Nigerian army spokesman, announced on Thursday, "We are still trying to compute the actual number of those rescued. But tentatively there are about 60 women of various ages and around 100 children." Usman said one woman who had been taken hostage by Boko Haram died in the fighting and eight of the rescued hostages were injured. One trooper was also killed and four others were wounded in the attack. On Tuesday, the Nigerian army rescued around 300 women and girls kidnapped by the militant group and held in their forest bastion in Nigeria’s northeastern Borno State. "Troops have this afternoon captured and destroyed three camps of terrorists inside the Sambisa Forest and rescued 200 girls and 93 women," military spokesman Chris Olukolade said on Tuesday. It has not been verified if those rescued are the same “Chibok girls” who were kidnapped last year, he said adding, “The freed persons are now being screened and profiled."Amnesty International says at least 2,000 women and girls have been kidnapped by Takfiri Boko Haram militants in Nigeria since the beginning of 2014, and many of them have been forced into sexual slavery or combat.
On April 14, 2014, Boko Haram militants abducted 276 girls from a secondary school in Chibok in Borno State. Fifty-seven of the girls managed to escape but 219 remained in captivity, reportedly in the Sambisa Forest. Boko Haram's leader, Abubakar Shekau, said he would "marry them off" or sell them as "slaves." The Takfiri militant group says its goal is to overthrow the government of Nigeria, and has claimed responsibility for a number of deadly shooting attacks andbombings in various parts of the country since the beginning of their militancy in 2009. Over 13,000 people have died ever since and some 1.5 million have been forced from their homes.
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More than 200 schoolgirls abducted from their school dormitories by Boko Haram militants last year are not among the nearly 300 girls and women rescued in an army operation on Tuesday, an army spokesman said.
Nigeria's army said it had rescued 200 girls and 93 women on Tuesday during a military operation to wrest back the Sambisa Forest in the northeast from the militant group.
"The troops rescued 200 abducted girls and 93 women," Colonel Sani Usman told Reuters in a text message. They were not, however, from Chibok, the village from which more than 200 girls were abducted in April 2014, he said.
"So far, they (the army) have destroyed and cleared Sassa, Tokumbere and two other camps in the general area of Alafa, all within the Sambisa forest."
Boko Haram's action in Chibok caused an international outcry, and the group's six-year insurgency has seen thousands killed and many more abducted.
Diplomats and intelligence officials said they believed at least some of the Chibok girls were being held in the forest about 100 km (60 miles) from Chibok, although U.S. reconnaissance drones failed to find them.
The rescued girls and women will be screened on Wednesday to determine whether they had been abducted or if they were married to the militants, one intelligence source told Reuters.
"Now they are excited about their freedom," he said. "Tomorrow there will be screenings to determine whether they are Boko Haram wives, whether they are from Chibok, how long they have been in the camps, and if they have children."
Some of the girls were injured, and some of the militants killed, he said without giving more details.
The group was rescued from camps "discovered near or on the way to Sambisa," one army official said.
Nigerian forces backed by warplanes invaded the vast former colonial game reserve late last week as part of a push to win back territory from Boko Haram.
The group, notorious for violence against civilians, controlled an area roughly the size of Belgium at the start of the year but has since been beaten back by Nigerian troops, backed by Chad, Niger and Cameroon.
While the Nigerian army maintains the group is now hemmed in Sambisa Forest, militants have managed to launch attacks in the neighborhood including chasing soldiers out of Marte town and an island on Lake Chad.
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Rev. Bruno Ateba, bishop of the Diocese of Maroua-Mokolo in Cameroon, complained in a letter this week that the world pays very little attention to the sufferings of Africans in comparison with treatment accorded to victims in the First World.
“Every day we experience what happened in Paris last January,” the bishop wrote in a message to the group Aid to the Church in Need, referring to the attacks on Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris. “Yet no one cares about our pain.”
The bishop said that violence perpetrated by the jihadist group Boko Haram has seriously affected his diocese, where in 2014, two diocesan staff members, three diocesan catechists, and thirty faithful were put to death by the radical Islamist sect.
His dioceses also saw numerous kidnappings by the group, including that of two Italian priests, don Giampaolo Martha and Father GianAntonio Allegri, seized along with the Canadian religious Sister Gilberte Bussiere last April. They were later released.
“The situation in the north of Cameroon is very difficult,” said Father Allegri, “and Boko Haram training camps are now set up there.”
According to the priest, Boko Haram is also aggressively recruiting young Cameroonians. “Many children are taken away by force or entrusted to Boko Haram by their families in exchange for promises of money and a better life,” he said.
Bishop Ateba claims that Islamists have recruited over 2,000 boys between the ages of 5 and 15 in the last year alone. “Extreme poverty makes the area a huge reservoir from which to draw for new recruits. The young Cameroonians have no prospects and are easy prey of the sect,” he said.
The extensive violence and looting Boko Haram carried out in the north of Cameroon has also resulted in a high number of internally displaced persons. “Our diocese,” said Ateba “is home to at least 55 thousand displaced people, in addition to the many refugees from Nigeria.”
According to the bishop, in addition to the thousands of refugees living in the two camps the United Nations High Commission for Refugees set up in Maroua, thousands of people have found accommodation with friends and relatives, while another 22,000 have found refuge in the bush.
“The situation is particularly dramatic for Amchidé,” said Ateba, “where the violence of Boko Haram has forced the entire village to flee, resulting in the suspension of all pastoral activity.”
“There are human skulls along the side of the street,” he said.
Terrorist attacks have severely damaged the infrastructure of the region—among the poorest in Cameroon—and have caused the closure of 110 schools and 13 health centers.
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Officials from Niger say the Boko Haram Takfiri militants have carried out an attack against the country’s army soldiers in Lake Chad. Niger’s Defense Ministry announced the assault in a statement on Saturday, without indicating if there had been any casualties in Lake Chad, located along the borders of Chad, Niger and Cameroon. “At dawn on April 25, fighters from the terrorist group Boko Haram riding motorized canoes attacked the island of Karamga, a position northwest of the town of Bosso held by our defense and security forces,” the statement said. However, an unnamed official from the southeastern city of Diffa said the death toll was “very heavy in the ranks of the Nigerien army.”
Following the attack, Niger’s President Mahamadou Issoufou called a meeting of the national security council. Niger, along with Chad, Cameroon and Nigeria, has been involved in a joint operation against Boko Haram, which started its activities six years ago. The terrorist group, whose name means, “Western education is forbidden,” says its goal is to overthrow the government of Nigeria. The Takfiri militants have claimed responsibility for a number of deadly shooting attacks and bombings in various parts of Nigeria since the beginning of their militancy in 2009, which has so far left over 13,000 people dead and displaced 1.5 million.
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