The Nigerian army this week released two more of the 276 girls kidnapped by Boko Haram in April 2014. The minors were kidnapped by jihadists in Chibok, a city in the northeast of the country.
“These girls were rescued after spending eight years in captivity by the Boko Haram group,” confirmed Major General Christopher Musa, commander of Operation Hadin Kai (launched in the northeast of the country to combat jihadism), on Wednesday.
The drama in Nigeria
After eight years of kidnapping, more than a hundred Chibok girls are still missing
Musa explained that they found the two girls released after fleeing Gazuwa camp, one of the jihadists’ logistics bases in Borno state.
The rescue took place on Monday, according to a message shared by the Nigerian Army on Wednesday. Both the girls and their children are “currently being held at military medical facilities.”
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The kidnapping in 2014 sparked a viral social media campaign calling for their release under the slogan #BringBackOurGirls, which has included the likes of then-First Lady Michelle Obama.
More than 35,000 victims of the jihadist group
Northeast Nigeria has been plagued by violence since 2015 from Boko Haram and his faction trying to impose an Islamic-style state on Nigeria, a country with a Muslim-majority north and predominantly Christian south.
Jihadist groups in Nigeria have killed more than 35,000 people and caused about 2.7 million internal displacements, mostly in Nigeria but also in neighboring countries like Cameroon, Chad and Niger, according to government and UN data.