Nigerian military frees 241 women and children from Boko Haram
Raids on the Islamic militants' camps near the border with Cameroon yield women and children thought to have been held captive as well as 43 suspected enemy fighters and intelligence about bomb-making, says Nigerian army
An estimated 2,000 women and children have been seized by Boko Haram since January 2014
By Aislinn Laing, Johannesburg
11:55AM BST 24 Sep 2015
The Nigerian military has freed 241 women and children in raids on Boko Haram camps and captured 43 suspected fighters, including a man it described as a “kingpin” of the terror group.
The raids on Tuesday were part of Operation Lafiya Dole, a bid to clear out the area surrounding Banki in Borno state which is close to the border with Cameroon.
Raids on the Islamic militants' camps near the border with Cameroon this week yielded women and children thought to have been held captive as well as 43 suspected enemy fighters and intelligence about bomb-making, Nigerian army says
Some of the rescued women and children are taken to safety
Boko Haram has used Banki to launch cross-border attacks, including in and around the Cameroon town of Amchide, where the Islamists clashed with security forces on Tuesday.
Sani Usman, a spokesman for the Nigerian army, said the suspected Boko fighters who were captured – among them a man believed to be a regional commander named Bulama Modu – also led them to a bomb factory and gave up information about other militants.
Raids on the Islamic militants' camps near the border with Cameroon this week yielded women and children thought to have been held captive as well as 43 suspected enemy fighters and intelligence about bomb-making, Nigerian army says
One of the photographs posted on Twitter by the Nigerian army showed women and small children sitting in fields
He said the women and children recovered were being screened to determine if they were captives or members of the militants’ families.
Photographs of the operation posted on Twitter by the Nigerian army showed women clutching small bundles of clothing and accompanied by babies and small children sitting in fields and being loaded onto open-sided military trucks.
The release is the biggest since the Nigerian army raid on the Boko Haram stronghold, the Sambisa Forest, in May in which 700 captives were released.
They told how Boko Haram had stoned their captives as the Nigerian military approached, and how some who hid in undergrowth during the battle had been run over by armoured vehicles and blown up by landmines.
An estimated 2,000 women and children have been seized by Boko Haram since January 2014, according to Amnesty International, as part of the group’s bid to establish a hardline Islamic state in the region.
The best-known group of captives globally are the 276 female students kidnapped from a school in the village of Chibok in Borno State in April last year.
It is not known if any of the Chibok girls are among those released this week. On Monday, Lt Gen Tukur Buratai said there were “strong indications” that they were still held within the fringes of the Sambisa forest and plans were being made to recover them.
He said the safe return of the girls, whose capture spawned a Twitter campaign BringBackOurGirls, was “very crucial” for the military.
“I believe that the girls must be somewhere within the general area of the forest, but we are not yet sure exactly where they are,” he told Nigerian journalists this week.
“As soon as this is confirmed, we will attempt to see what we can do to bring them back in one piece, it is very crucial because their safety is very important.
“They could be somewhere else, so we are taking this issue in piecemeal so that we are sure of where we are and how we are going about it and we believe that we can find a solution to it very soon.”
