'I abducted your girls': Boko Haram leader claims group kidnapped 200 nigerian schoolgirls
ABUJA, Nigeria - The Islamist militant group Boko Haram has claimed responsibility for the abduction of more than 200 Nigerian schoolgirls during a raid last month, the French news agency AFP reported on Monday.
ABUJA, Nigeria — The Islamist militant group Boko Haram has claimed responsibility for the abduction of more than 200 Nigerian schoolgirls during a raid last month, the French news agency AFP reported on Monday.
AFP said it had obtained a video from Boko Haram showing the group’s leader Abubakar Shekau saying: “I abducted your girls.”
“I will sell them in the market,” Shekau added, according to AFP. It did not immediately give further details, and the report could not immediately be verified by NBC News.
The girls were seized from a secondary school in the village of Chibok in northeast Nigeria on April 14.
The kidnappings have sparked numerous protests throughout Nigeria as people were outraged over perceived government inaction and ineptitude. Demonstrations have spread to Washington and London, with pressure mounting over the Nigerian government’s failure to find the girls.
Nigeria’s president over the weekend insisted the girls would be found.
Last week, the U.S. said it was working with Nigeria to support their efforts to find the girls amid reports the schoolgirls are being sold into marriage.
Boko Haram — whose name means “Western education is sinful” — has been waging an increasingly intensive campaign to carve out an Islamic state in northern Nigeria.
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