Nigeria's Boko Haram Nabs 8 More Girls as U.S. Offers to Send Experts
Suspected Boko Haram Islamists have kidnapped eight more girls from Nigeria's embattled northeast, residents said on Tuesday, after the extremist group's leader claimed responsibility for abducting more than 200 schoolgirls last month.
"They moved door to door looking for girls," said Abdullahi Sani, referring to the late Sunday attack in the village of Warabe, Borno state. "They forcefully took away eight girls between the ages of 12 and 15."
Sani, a Warabe resident, spoke to Agence France Presse by phone from Gwoza, a town 10 kilometers (six miles) away where he and others fled after the attack, which he blamed on Boko Haram.
He said the attackers did not kill anyone, which was "surprising," and suggested that abducting girls was the motive for the attack.
The gunmen torched parts of the village, he said.
Another Warabe resident who also fled to Gwoza, Peter Gambo, confirmed Sani's account of the attack and said the military had not yet provided any protection.
"We in Gwoza are also living in fear because of the kidnap of eight girls in Warabe," he told AFP. "We have no security here. If the gunmen decide to pick our own girls nobody can stop them."
Police in Borno did not respond to calls or text messages seeking comment, and state government spokesman Isa Gusau told AFP he was not aware of the attack.
The targeted area is 160 kilometers (100 miles) from Borno's state capital of Maiduguri, where Boko Haram was founded more than a decade ago.
Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau said his fighters carried out the April 14 abduction of more than 200 girls from Chibok, also in Borno, and threatened to sell them as slaves in a video obtained by AFP on Monday.
Later on Tuesday, the United States offered to send a team of experts to Nigeria to help find the kidnapped schoolgirls.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry made the offer in a phone call to Nigeria's President Goodluck Jonathan, who welcomed it, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.
Kerry, who was to meet with President Barack Obama later in the day, said the United States "is ready to send a team to Nigeria to discuss how the United States can best support" efforts to find the girls, Psaki said, adding that details have to be worked out.
She said Washington had also offered to set up a coordination cell at their embassy in Abuja with U.S. military personnel, law enforcement officials as well as experts in hostage situations.
Obama "has asked us and the secretary to do everything we can to help the Nigerian government find and free all these" girls, the spokeswoman said.
Source: Agence France Presse
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