Alwaght- In yet another mass kidnapping of schoolgirls in Nigeria more than 100 girls were abducted after suspected Boko Haram militants raided on their school last week. Government has deployed fighter jets, helicopters and surveillance planes to search for them.
Militants on February 19 drove into the town of Dapchi in northeastern Yobe State in trucks and attacked the Government Girls Science Technical College, causing students and teachers to flee into the surrounding bush. 110 girls remain unaccounted for, Nigerian Ministry for Information said Sunday, adding 906 students were in the school on the day of the attack.
It is not known how the girls were abducted, but witnesses say some of the attackers were camouflaged, making the students mistake them for army soldiers.
The Nigerian Air Force also said the chief of air staff had “directed the immediate deployment of additional air assets and Nigerian Air Force personnel to the northeast with the sole mission of conducting day and night searches for the missing girls” in coordination with the ground forces.
The latest kidnappings have revived the painful memories of another mass abduction in April 2014, when Boko Haram militants attacked a girl school and kidnapped 294 girls in Chibok, Borno State. Many of the girls were released after negotiations, but more than 100 remain in captivity, their whereabouts unknown.
There has been growing anger among locals over the government’s handling of the recent incident as well as reports that soldiers had been withdrawn from key checkpoints in Dapchi last month.
The Nigerian government has claimed in the past that Boko Haram was defeated, but the Takfiri outfit continues to vex especially in the country’s restive northeast.
The Takfiri Boko Haram militant group has killed more than 20,000 people and forced two million to flee their homes since the onset of its terror campaign in 2009. It pledged allegiance Daesh in 2015.
