Nigeria is screening hundreds of women rescued from a stronghold of militant group Boko Haram to check if they include schoolgirls who were kidnapped from Chibok, Nigeria, last year.
“The girls are undergoing screening to ascertain their identities,” government spokesman Mike Omeri said by telephone yesterday from Abuja. “We’ll know who they are from there.”
The army on Tuesday said it rescued 200 girls and 93 women from the Sambisa Forest in northeastern Nigeria, although it is unclear if they include the more than 200 children captured from the town of Chibok last year.
The military said earlier this month that troops were moving into Sambisa Forest, a Boko Haram hideout, in search of the Chibok schoolgirls.
Boko Haram has kidnapped thousands of women as part of a violent campaign to impose Islamic law in Nigeria over the past six years that has included mass killings.
The capture of the Chibok girls last year prompted a social media campaign and widespread public anger at Nigeria’s government for failing to locate or recover the girls.
Former Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan, who bore the brunt of the criticism, was defeated in last month’s election by former military dictator Muhammadu Buhari.
Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau has said on videos posted on YouTube that the girls, many of them raised as Christians, have been converted to Islam and “married off” to fighters in the group.
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