WUNRN
Full Press Release: http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=47593&Cr=nigeria&Cr1=
NIGERIA - UNICEF CALLS FOR IMMEDIATE
RELEASE OF MILITANT ABDUCTED SCHOOL GIRLS
Since
June 2013, attacks in northeastern
16
April 2014 – The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)
has strongly condemned the reported abduction of some 100 school girls between
12 and 17 years old from their school hostel in north-eastern
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NIGERIA - MILITANT GROUP ABDUCTS 100
+ SCHOOL IRLS - SEARCH CONTINUES
April
16, 2014 - The Nigerian military is joining the search for at least 100 teenage
girls abducted from a school in the remote northeast.
It is thought that Islamist militant
group Boko Haram took them to a forest near the Cameroonian border.
The air force, army, police and local
volunteers are all involved in the search, officials say.
For years, Boko Haram has been waging a
bloody armed campaign for an Islamic state in northern
The militant group's name means
"Western education is forbidden" in the local Hausa language.
The BBC's Hausa Service says the group
has kidnapped civilians in the past - usually women to work as sex slaves.
Gunmen reportedly arrived at the school
in Chibok, a remote area of Borno state, late on Tuesday, and ordered its teenage
residents on to lorries.
A local politician said about 50 army
soldiers had been stationed near the school ahead of annual exams, but were
apparently overpowered.
Local residents reported hearing
explosions followed by gunfire.
"Many girls were abducted by the
rampaging gunmen who stormed the school in a convoy of vehicles," local
education official Emmanuel Sam told the AFP news agency.
A girl, who managed to escape and did
not want to be named, told the BBC that she and fellow students were sleeping
when armed men burst into their hostel.
The girl said she and her schoolmates
were taken away in a convoy, which had to slow down after some of the vehicles
developed a fault, at which point 10 to 15 girls escaped.
"We ran into the bush and waited until
daybreak before we went back home," she said.
Nigerian media reported that two members
of the security forces had been killed, and residents said 170 houses were
burnt down during the attack.
The militants know the terrain well and
the military has had only limited success in previous efforts to dislodge them
from their forest hide-outs in the past.
It will be hard for any rescue effort to
succeed without further endangering the girls' lives, the BBC's
Boko Haram is a fierce critic of
Western-style education, and its militants frequently target educational
institutions.
This year, the group's fighters have
killed more than 1,500 civilians in three states in north-east
The government recently said that Boko
Haram's activities were confined to that part of the country. However, bombings
blamed on the group killed more than 70 people in the capital
city of
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