~~May 6, 2014~~
How More Than 300 Girls Were Kidnapped By Extremists
The girls in the school dorm could hear the sound of gunshots from a nearby town. So when armed men in uniforms burst in and promised to rescue them, at first they were relieved.
“Don’t worry, we’re soldiers,” one 16-year-old girl recalls them saying. “Nothing is going to happen to you.”
The gunmen commanded the hundreds of students at the Chibok Government Girls Secondary School to gather outside. The men went into a storeroom and removed all the food. Then they set fire to the room.
“They … started shouting, ‘Allahu Akhbar,’ (God is great),” the 16-year-old student said. “And we knew.”
What they knew was chilling: The men were not government soldiers at all. They were members of the ruthless Islamic extremist group called Boko Haram. They kidnapped the entire group of girls and drove them away in pickup trucks into the dense forest.
Three weeks later, 276 girls are still missing. At least two have died of snakebite, and about 20 others are ill, according to an intermediary who is in touch with their captors.
Their plight — and the failure of the Nigerian military to find them — has drawn international attention to an escalating Islamic extremist insurrection that has killed more than 1,500 so far this year. Boko Haram, the name means “Western education is sinful,” has claimed responsibility for the mass kidnapping and threatened to sell the girls. The claim was made in a video seen Monday. The British and U.S. governments have expressed concern over the fate of the missing students, and protests have erupted in major Nigerian cities and in New York.
The 16-year-old was among about 50 students who escaped on that fateful day, and she spoke for the first time in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. The AP also interviewed about 30 others, including Nigerian government and Borno state officials, school officials, six relatives of the missing girls, civil society leaders and politicians in northeast Nigeria and soldiers in the war zone. Many spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing that giving their names would also reveal the girls’ identities and subject them to possible stigmatization in this conservative society.
The Chibok girls school is in the remote and sparsely populated northeast region of Nigeria, a country of 170 million with a growing chasm between a north dominated by Muslims and a south by Christians. Like all schools in Borno state, Chibok, an elite academy of both Muslim and Christian girls, had been closed because of increasingly deadly attacks by Boko Haram. But it had reopened to allow final-year students to take exams.
At about 11 p.m. on April 14, a local government official, Bana Lawal, received a warning via cell phone. He was told that about 200 heavily armed militants in 20 pickup trucks and more than 30 motorcycles were headed toward his town.
Lawal alerted the 15 soldiers guarding Chibok, he said. Then he roused sleeping residents and told them to flee into the bush and the nearby hills. The soldiers sent an SOS to the nearest barracks, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) away, an hour’s drive on a dirt road.
No help arrived.
~~SOURCE/FULL READ~~
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/nigerian-girl-describes-kidnap-276-missing-23602112
http://article.wn.com/view/2014/04/16/Nigeria_unrest_Huge_search_for_abducted_schoolgirls/
https://www.facebook.com/bringbackourgirls?fref=photo
~~Published on May 1, 2014~~
On April 16, over 230 school girls were kidnapped from their dorm rooms by terrorists in Nigeria. The world has done nothing to rescue them.
This video was made by Louis King, a young Nigerian Director. The voice you hear is of a father of one of our kidnapped girl’s
Join us on twitter/rescueourgirls and facebook.com/bringbackourgirls and let uss march on social media to raise awareness.
Write and call your leaders. Now. #bringbackourgirls
We ALL are ONE!!
Reblogged this on The Fifth Column and commented:
I hope this issue gets more publicity. Perhaps it’s because it doesn’t involve a glamorous student overseas missing for months or something similar. 300 young girls…300!
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I love your comprehensive look at the issue. 😉 Thank you…
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Thank you .. It’s the least I could do. So many other articles/posts wanted to keep this one simple. Hugs …
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NOW!
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Yes, now!!! No more waiting!!
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Reblogged this on The ObamaCrat™.
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Thank you for the comprehensiveness of this. It is a tragedy
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TY …. If you are on FB, there’s a new page … Bring Back outer Girls. Very comprehensive and updated.
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Great job!! By the way, a few more have been taken as of today!! SMH …
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Hello my name is Katrina Addison is hurts my soul I’m hosting a campaign tomorrow 5/16 @6pm at Ritenour High School in Saint Louis mo on the football field we supposed to have over 200 people taking a stand I tried reaching out to our government no return email or call yet minority school age youth We are continuing to pray for you all…… God blessed
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