Surveillance planes fly over remote forest area where jihadist militants are thought to be holding more than 200 schoolgirls The US and Britain have stepped up military assistance to the Nigerian government as part of a mounting international effort to find and rescue more than 200 teenage girls abducted by Islamist militants almost a month ago. US surveillance planes have begun flying missions over...
Manned MC-12W aircraft, one of planned fleet of 42 planes in hunt for Boko Haram captives, backs US Africom team A manned twin-engine surveillance plane, called the Beechcraft MC-12W Liberty , has begun flying missions over Nigeria to help track down the country's kidnapped schoolgirls, according to American media reports. Officials said the missions were being launched from a US drone base in Niger,...
Washington also sends military, policing and development personnel to help search for more than 200 kidnapped children The United States has deployed manned surveillance aircraft over Nigeria and is sharing satellite imagery with the Nigerian government to find more than 200 schoolgirls abducted by Islamist insurgents, a senior Obama administration official said on Monday. "We have shared commercial...
White House spokesman Jay Carney confirms that the US team in Nigeria sent over to help free the schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram militants is 'up and running', providing surveillance and military assistance. Speaking at a press briefing in Washington, Carney says the US team, from the FBI, defence and state departments, are helping the Nigerian government to search for the girls Continue reading......
Surveillance planes fly over remote forest area where more than 200 teenage girls are suspected of being held by Boko Haram US surveillance planes have begun flying missions over a remote area of Nigeria as part of a mounting international effort to find and rescue more than 200 teenage girls abducted by Islamist militants almost a month ago. The US has also sent expert advisers to Nigeria to "dig...
Nigerian Nobel laureate says sectarian violence has gone unpunished for too long, writes Magnus Taylor Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka , who turns 80 this year, has long inhabited that illustrious pantheon of African literary greats; in 1986 he was awarded the Nobel Prize as an author "who in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence". Whilst his...
Leader Abubakar Shekau suggests the girls could be exchanged for jailed Boko Haram members The dozens of young women corralled into a clearing to recite the first chapter of the Qur'an, their palms turned upwards in prayer but their collective gaze fixed mainly on the forest floor on which they sit, have, in their captors' words, been "liberated". Continue reading... ...
A new video released by Islamist militant group Boko Haram claims to show the kidnapped schoolgirls from Nigeria for the first time. More than 100 girls are seen sitting outside in a group wearing veils and praying in an undisclosed location. In the full video, which is 17 minutes long, the leader of the Islamist group, Abubakar Shekau, says the girls have converted to Islam. The Guardian has concealed...
New video shows kidnapped girls for the first time and claims they have now converted to Islam The leader of Nigerian terrorist group Boko Haram has offered a deal to end the kidnapping of more than 200 schoolgirls as the group released video of the girls for the first time. In a video released on Monday, the leader of the Islamist group, Abubakar Shekau, said the girls abducted by his fighters last...
More of missing schoolgirls could have escaped but were too frightened because of threats to shoot them, says 19-year-old One of the teenagers who escaped from Islamist abductors said the kidnapping was too terrifying for words and she was too scared to go back to school. Science student Sarah Lawan, 19, told the Associated Press on Sunday that more of the 300 girls and young women who were seized...
Look one way and my country is booming. Look another and there's poverty and fear exploited by Boko Haram I had not heard the phrase Boko Haram when I first moved to Abuja, Nigeria's capital, in 2009 to take up a job at an international secondary school. But just about everything felt new in Abuja, with its broad, tarred roads, the shiny experimental structures, modern hospitals and pastel-coloured...
Social media has made a difference in the search for the schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram, says Marissa Jackson Debate: Your hashtags won't bring #BringBackOurGirls I am not Nigerian and I do not have constitutional rights accorded to me by the Nigerian government. I cannot participate in Nigerias national democratic process. I have never been to Nigeria. I have not known the pain of having a child...
British Nigerians in south London tell of their shock and fear at the schoolgirl abductions by Boko Haram, and their worries for family back home In the half-term holiday later this month, Nigerian-born Olu Alabe had been planning to take her daughters Jameera, four, and Jasmine, one back to west Africa to visit family. "We're not going now," she said. "There is no security, and how...
Nigerians have suffered more than a year of attacks on western-style schools but the world is only just waking up to it The gunmen stormed in just as dawn broke over the school in a remote village in north-eastern Nigeria. There were around two dozen of them, and, survivors later recounted, they worked quickly, methodically and with unflinching brutality. "Allahu Akbar," they shouted, as...
As the search for the kidnapped schoolgirls continues, both the west and Nigeria itself will finally be forced to tackle the complacency which allowed terrorism to flourish One of the more disturbing aspects of the campaign of terror Boko Haram has waged across the north of Nigeria in recent years is the confidence its leaders seem to harbour that they are beyond the reach of sanction by any authorities....
American first lady delivers president's weekly address to highlight concern over Nigeria Michelle Obama has taken the unique step of delivering her husband's weekly presidential address to express outrage at the kidnapping of the Nigerian schoolgirls. Continue reading... ...
Africa is facing a real and present danger from radical ideology and terror networks. How do we overcome this challenge? When the news filtered out last month that a number of schoolgirls sitting for exams had been abducted from a school in north-east Nigeria, the world was broadly silent. Not many people could have predicted that, a few weeks later, everyone from Michelle Obama to David Cameron and...
US first lady Michelle Obama condemns the mass kidnap of Nigerian schoolgirls by the militant group Boko Haram. Speaking on Saturday instead of her husband in the weekly presidential address, the first lady describes the abductions as an unconscionable act - 'grown men attempting to snuff out the aspirations of young girls'. The kidnap has drawn international condemnation and promises of special forces...
America's first lady uses weekly national address to express heartbreak and outrage at Boko Haram kidnappings, vowing that US is doing everything possible to help rescue Michelle Obama has taken the rare step of delivering her husband's weekly video address to express outrage over the plight of more than 250 schoolgirls kidnapped by Islamist militants in Nigeria. Continue reading... ...
First lady will take over from her husband to draw attention to kidnappings ahead of mother's day in the US America's first lady Michelle Obama will deliver her husband's weekly radio address this weekend to draw attention to the plight of the kidnapped schoolgirls in Nigeria. As the UN security council on Friday night expressed outrage at the abductions by Islamist militants and demanded their immediate...