Boko Haram kidnapping: More than 60 women, girls escape Islamist abductors in Nigeria, security source says
More than 60 women and girls abducted last month by suspected Boko Haram militants in north-eastern Nigeria have escaped their captors, according to security sources.
Local vigilante Abbas Gava said he had "received an alert from my colleagues ... that about 63 of the abducted women and girls had made it back home" late on Friday.
A high-level security source in the Borno state capital Maiduguri, who requested anonymity because he was not authorised to speak on the matter, confirmed the escape.
Mr Gava, a senior official of the local vigilantes in Borno state who are working closely with security officials, told journalists the women escaped when their captors went out to fight.
What is Boko Haram?
- Boko Haram became active in 2003 and is concentrated in northern Nigeria.
- Boko Haram, which means "Western education is sinful", is loosely modelled on the Taliban movement in Afghanistan.
- The group considers all who do not follow its strict ideology as infidels, whether they are Christian or Muslim.
- It demands the adoption of Sharia law in all of Nigeria.
"They took the bold step when their abductors moved out to carry out an operation," he said.
Clashes took place between the Islamists and the army late on Friday after an attack by the insurgents in the town of Damboa, where more than 50 of them were killed, the army had said.
Spokesmen for the armed forces or the government could not be reached for comment.
Activists of the Bring Back Our Girls movement meanwhile tried to march on the presidential palace in Abuja on Sunday in another reminder of the fate of more than 200 girls kidnapped in a separate incident in Chibok, Borno state, on April 14, but were asked by security forces to turn back.
"It's 83 days today that the girls have been abducted," activist Aisha Yesufu told the media.
"We have been coming out for 68 days and nobody has really listened to us," Ms Yesufu told reporters after the march.
She said that was why the group decided to take the protest back to the president.
"So that he will know that we are still out there after the 68 days that we have been coming out daily."
Security experts say the overstretched and under-resourced military is incapable of fighting an effective counterinsurgency against the Boko Haram militants, who have killed thousands in their five-year campaign for an independent Islamic state in the north.
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