Over 60 flee Boko Haram abductors

More than 60 Nigerian girls and women abducted by Islamic extremists two weeks ago have managed to escape, officials have said.

Nigerian security forces and federal government officials had denied reports of the mass abduction from three villages in the north east state of Borno on June 22.

Chibok local government chairman Pogu Bitrus said about 63 women and girls escaped on Thursday and Friday.

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He sent a representative to meet some of the escapees and their families at a hospital in Lassa, a town in the neighbouring Damboa local government area.

Vigilante leader Abbas Gava in Maiduguri, capital of Borno state, said on Sunday that vigilantes in the area told him 63 women and girls managed to get away on Friday while their captors were engaged in a major attack on a military barracks and police headquarters in Damboa town.

Small-scale kidnappings by Boko Haram extremists had been going on for months before they drew international condemnation for the abductions of more than 200 schoolgirls 
from a school in Chibok town of Borno state on April 15.

Some 219 of those girls still are missing.

Boko Haram is demanding the release of detained fighters in exchange for the girls. Nigeria’s president Goodluck Jonathan has reportedly refused to consider a prisoner swap.

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The Kibaku Area Development Association, a local residents’ association of which he is also chairman, reported that 19 villages have been attacked since the April 15 abductions, with more than 229 people killed and about 100 seriously wounded.

In 90 per cent of cases there had been advance warning – yet the military had taken no action, the association said.