Nigerian army says it found schoolgirl, abducted with nearly 300 others in 2014, during raid on militant hideout

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

One of the Nigerian schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram more than two years ago has been rescued, along with her 10-month old boy fathered by one of the kidnappers.



Nigerian troops said they carried out a pre-dawn raid on a forest hideout to rescue the girl, the Associated Press reported.

However, an earlier Reuters report suggested the girl was found in Borno state by soldiers screening escapees from Boko Haram’s base in the Sambisa forest.

Chibok: the village that lost its daughters to Boko Haram Read more

Bring Back Our Girls, a campaign group with close ties to the relatives of those abducted, said “preliminary investigations” showed the girl was no 198 on its register of the kidnapped girls.



The group said in a statement that she was from Askira Uba, a district in the north-eastern state of Borno, and was abducted with her twin, who has yet to return.



Nearly 300 girls were kidnapped in April 2014 from their school in Chibok, Borno, where Boko Haram has waged a seven-year insurgency. Dozens of schoolgirls escaped in the first few hours but nearly 200 remain captive.

A faction of the militant group released 21 girls last month as part of a deal brokered by the Red Cross and the Swiss government. Another girl escaped in May.



Boko Haram is fighting for the establishment of an Islamic state in northern Nigeria. About 20,000 people have been killed in the uprising, which has spread across borders and forced 2.6 million refugees from their homes.

Thousands of Boko Haram captives were freed this year after the military forced the extremists out of towns and villages in north-eastern Nigeria, where they had declared an Islamic caliphate.

President Muhammadu Buhari has vowed to secure the release of those schoolgirls who remain captive.

The failures of successive governments and security forces to free the girls brought international condemnation and the creation of Bring Back Our Girls.

The refusal of the former Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan to admit the girls had been taken hostage, losing precious days, contributed to his defeat in last year’s election.

Meanwhile, activists and relatives have objected to the government’s prolonged detention of Amina Ali Nkeki, who escaped in May. She wants to be reunited with her mother and the father of her child, a Boko Haram extremist who she says was also a kidnap victim and who helped her escape.

The government says she is receiving trauma counselling at a military hospital in Abuja, where she has been joined by the girls released last month.