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Thursday 19 May 2016

Fresh hopes for Chibok girls as rescued student meets Buhari


 
The first of 219 abducted Chibok schoolgirls to be found after more than two years in Boko Haram captivity was on Thursday to meet Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari, amid hopes more girls can be freed.

Amina Ali, who was discovered by civilian vigilantes and soldiers on Tuesday and taken to the Borno state capital, Maiduguri, was to fly to on Thursday afternoon, said governor Kashim Shettima.
Boko Haram fighters seized 276 girls from the Government Girls Secondary School in the remote Borno town of Chibok on April 14, 2014. Fifty-seven escaped in the hours that followed.
The abduction provoked global outrage and brought worldwide attention to the conflict but until Amina's release, there have been few indications of the girls' whereabouts or possible release.
 
 
Community leaders said she told her relatives at a brief reunion at the family home in Mbalala, near Chibok, that most of the girls were still being held in Boko Haram's Sambisa Forest enclave.
But the 19-year-old was quoted as saying that "six were already dead".
Nigeria's military has been conducting operations in the former game reserve for weeks in the hope of flushing out militants and destroying Islamist camps in the sprawling semi-desert scrubland.
The abducted girls have long been thought to have been taken to the forest. Satellite imagery provided by the United States and Britain reportedly identified the location of some of the students.
 
 
The discovery of Amina has boosted hopes among campaigners that the remaining 218 girls will soon be found and reunited with their families.
But with several thousand women and young girls thought to have been kidnapped by Boko Haram and hundreds found over the last year, there were calls for more to be done to support the victims.
"There are quite simply no formal programmes in place for women and girls who escaped or were rescued from Boko Haram to access specialised healthcare or to reintegrate back into society," said Francisca Vigaud-Walsh, from Refugees International.
 
 

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