Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan has revealed that Israelis have joined an international team, that includes American, British and French personnel, in the mission to rescue the 220 girls abducted by Islamist terror group Boko Haram, last April.

Jonathan made the comments during a meeting with Pakistani rights campaigner Malala Yousafzai in Abuja on Monday.

Malala - who has become a global campaigner for human rights since she survived an attempted murder by the Taliban in 2012 - had urged the Nigerian government to do more during a meeting with the missing girls' relatives.

Jonathan was quoted by public relations firm Levick as saying: "Terror is relatively new here and dealing with it has its challenges. The great challenge in rescuing the Chibok girls is the need to ensure that they are rescued alive.

"The time it is taking to achieve that objective is not a question of the competence of the Nigerian Government. We have had teams from the United States, Britain, France, Israel and other friendly nations working with us here on the rescue effort and they all appreciate the challenges and the need to thread carefully to achieve our purpose," he said.

Jonathan added he would meet with the missing girls' parents to reassure them that the government was doing all within its powers to rescue their daughters.

The missing girls were kidnapped in a school in Chibok, Borno State, on 14 April. Some 50 girls managed to escape but around 220 are still missing.

Boko Haram, which opposes the westernisation of Nigeria and wishes to impose sharia law, carried out another mass kidnapping in June, when it abducted 91 civilians, including toddlers, in a village in northern Nigeria. Two weeks later, 63 girls managed to flee.