Twelve young women and girls abducted in Borno state on November 22 were released late Saturday, local officials and the military said.
“All 12 were released,” Abubakar Mazhinyi, president of the Askira-Uba council, told the AFP news agency. The Nigerian Army said the rescued women have been moved to a secure military facility where they are receiving medical care, psychological support and debriefing; they will be reunited with their families once those procedures are completed.
Thirteen females, aged between 16 and 23, were initially taken near farms close to an area reportedly used as a jihadist hideout. One of the group was freed earlier after telling captors she was nursing a baby. The Army attributed the abduction to Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), a breakaway faction of Boko Haram.
Borno remains the epicenter of the insurgency that began 16 years ago with Boko Haram. Although the campaign by Islamist militants has been degraded over time, both Boko Haram and ISWAP continue to carry out attacks and kidnappings across the region. The recent spate of abductions recalls the 2014 Chibok kidnapping of nearly 300 schoolgirls.
Elsewhere in Nigeria, armed gangs in the central-western Niger Delta last week abducted more than 300 children and staff from a Catholic school. Some people escaped, but authorities say more than 265 pupils and teachers remain in captivity. Those assaults have been linked to local criminal gangs rather than to jihadist groups.
On Wednesday, President Bola Tinubu declared a security emergency and ordered large-scale recruitment for the police and military. He also authorized the Department of State Services to deploy trained forest guards and hire additional personnel to pursue armed groups hiding in forests. “There will be no more hiding places for agents of evil,” Tinubu said in a televised address.
Edited by Louis Oelofse