Doug Stanglin

USA TODAY

Nigeria’s president said Saturday that his forces had crushed the notorious Boko Haram extremist group and driven them out of their forest encampment, but have yet to locate scores of Nigerian schoolgirls kidnapped by the militants in 2014.

President Muhammadu Buhari’s victorious announcement Saturday also indicated Nigerian forces need to remain vigilant to fight off individual suicide bombings, village attacks and assaults on remote military outposts by remnants of the homegrown Islamist group.

Still, Buhari's announcement expressed relief that army and security forces had broken the back of the organization. He said Nigeria's “gallant troops” on Friday drove the insurgents out of their “Camp Zero” deep in the northeastern Sambisa Forest.

The forest is believed to hold more than 200 schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram from a school in the town of Chibok. The mass abductions sparked international outcry, and prompted the social media campaign #BringBackOurGirls.

“Further efforts should be intensified to locate and free our remaining Chibok girls still in captivity," he said. "May God be with them."

Nigerian troops have freed thousands of Boko Haram captives this year, including some of the Chibok girls among 276 seized from a government boarding school.

100+ Chibok Girls Reluctant to Quit Boko Haram

In October, 21 Chibok girls were freed through negotiations between the government and Boko Haram, brokered by the Swiss government and the International Red Cross. In May, one Chibok girl escaped on her own.

The freed girls have indicated several others died in captivity from things like malaria and snake bites.

Boko Haram, which means "Western Education Is Forbidden," has been around since the late 1990s but declared its solidarity with al-Qaeda in 2010 and launched a series of suicide bombings and attacks on Western facilities, including a vehicle-bomb attack on the United Nations headquarters in Abuja that killed 23 people in 2011.

It has sought to overthrow the Nigerian government and replace it with a regime based on Islamic law.

In 2014, under the leadership of Abubakar Shekau, it launched almost daily attacks on Christians, police, the media, schools and Muslims it perceived as collaborators, according to the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center.

In 2015, it declared allegiance with the Islamic State. The group has also conducted attacks in neighboring Cameroon, Chad and Niger.