Boko Haram put out a video yesterday showing some of the kidnapped enslaved schoolgirls (and perhaps some other girls) wearing hijab and long robes, chanting a bit of the Koran. Relatives and friends have identified some of them from the video.
The 27-minute footage was shown to some people in Chibok – the town where the girls were kidnapped – on Monday evening.
Not all girls are from Chibok itself as pupils from surrounding areas had come to do their final year exams in April as the school in the town was considered relatively safe.
A community leader in Chibok told the BBC that school friends had identified three of the girls in the video.
A mother had also recognised her daughter from the girls who appear in a group wearing hijabs, the chairman of the parents-teachers association at the school told the Reuters news agency.
It’s a painful thing to watch, knowing they’re there under duress, with their lives ripped away from them, at the mercy of a bunch of men who love killing people.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXlM4Pyhj2g
Meanwhile, the US has revealed it is flying manned surveillance missions over Nigeria to an effort to find the missing schoolgirls.
A team of about 30 US experts – members of the FBI and defence and state departments – is in Nigeria to help with the search. The UK, France and China also have teams on the ground in Nigeria and an Israeli counter-terrorism team is on its way.
I hope they succeed.