The Nigerian military is joining the search for at least 100 teenage girls abducted from a school in the remote northeast.<\/p>\n
It is thought that Islamist militant group Boko Haram took them to a forest near the Cameroonian border.<\/p>\n
The air force, army, police and local volunteers are all involved in the search, officials say.<\/p>\n
For years, Boko Haram has been waging a bloody armed campaign for an Islamic state in northern Nigeria.<\/p>\n
The militant group’s name means “Western education is forbidden” in the local Hausa language.<\/p>\n
The BBC’s Hausa Service says the group has kidnapped civilians in the past – usually women to work as sex slaves.<\/p>\n
Gunmen reportedly arrived at the school in Chibok, a remote area of Borno state, late on Tuesday, and ordered its teenage residents on to lorries.<\/p>\n
A local politician said about 50 army soldiers had been stationed near the school ahead of annual exams, but were apparently overpowered.<\/p>\n
Local residents reported hearing explosions followed by gunfire.<\/p>\n
“Many girls were abducted by the rampaging gunmen who stormed the school in a convoy of vehicles,” local education official Emmanuel Sam told the AFP news agency.<\/p>\n
A girl, who managed to escape and did not want to be named, told the BBC that she and fellow students were sleeping when armed men burst into their hostel.<\/p>\n
The girl said she and her schoolmates were taken away in a convoy, which had to slow down after some of the vehicles developed a fault, at which point 10 to 15 girls escaped.<\/p>\n
“We ran into the bush and waited until daybreak before we went back home,” she said.<\/p>\n
Nigerian media reported that two members of the security forces had been killed, and residents said 170 houses were burnt down during the attack.<\/p>\n
The militants know the terrain well and the military has had only limited success in previous efforts to dislodge them from their forest hide-outs in the past.<\/p>\n
It will be hard for any rescue effort to succeed without further endangering the girls’ lives, the BBC’s Nigeria correspondent Will Ross says.<\/p>\n
Boko Haram is a fierce critic of Western-style education, and its militants frequently target educational institutions.<\/p>\n
This year, the group’s fighters have killed more than 1,500 civilians in three states in north-east Nigeria, which are currently under emergency rule.<\/p>\n
The government recently said that Boko Haram’s activities were confined to that part of the country. However, bombings blamed on the group killed more than 70 people <\/b>in the capital city of Abuja on Monday.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Nigerian military is joining the search for at least 100 teenage girls abducted from a school in the remote northeast. It is thought that Islamist militant group Boko Haram took them to a forest near the Cameroonian border. The air force, army, police and local volunteers are all involved in the search, officials say. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":13869,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[14],"yoast_head":"\n