Boko Haram Girls Rescued From Secret

Nigeria Boko Haram disaster: UN aid convoy ambushed   read.com.ngSuspected Islamist Boko Haram militants have ambushed an UN humanitarian aid convoy in northeastern Nigeria which had a military escort, officials say. The military said three civilians, including UN staff, and two soldiers were wounded in the attack. It's prompted the UN to briefly suspend aid deliveries in Borno state, where more than two million people have been displaced by the insurgency. The UN says thousands of children are severely malnourished in the area. Earlier this month the UN's children agency warned that tens of thousands of kids would die if treatment didn't reach them soon. Islamist militant group Boko Haram, which has lost most of the territory it controlled 18 months ago, is fighting to overthrow the authorities. Its seven-year insurgency has left 20,000 people dead, mostly in the nation's northeast. The wounded are in a secure condition and are being treated in the state capital Maiduguri, according to a statement in the military. "The convoy was travelling from Bama to Maiduguri in Borno State... returning from delivering desperately needed assistance" at the time of the ambush, Unicef said. "This wasn't only an attack on humanitarian workers. It's an attack on the folks who most need the support and aid that these workers were bringing," it added. Boko Haram never really went away, contrary to the Nigerian government saying that the group have been conquered "technically" or even "decisively". Nigeria and its neighbours has unquestionably weakened in the combined military offensive the group, losing swathes of land in Nigeria's north east. But attacks against security forces and civilians have seen a resurgence in recent months. The assaults have even been boosted by media outlets of the so-called Islamic State, to which Boko Haram's leaders have sworn allegiance. It doesn't help that Nigeria is currently fighting another conflict against oil militants in the southern Niger Delta area. UN suspends aid to dangerous regions of northeast Nigeria LAGOS, Nigeria — The United Nations is freezing aid to dangerous places of Nigeria’s northeastern Borno state, where it says after a humanitarian convoy was ambushed by Boko Haram a half million people are starving. Three civilians including an UNICEF worker and contractor for the International Organization for Migration were wounded in Thursday’s ambush, along with two of the soldiers escorting the humanitarian workers, based on the Nigerian army and the U.N. Children’s Fund. "Only the U.N. missions outside the capital have been suspended," UNICEF spokeswoman Doune Porter told The Associated Press on Friday. "The regular support we have been giving will continue in Maiduguri," the Borno state capital of 1 million people that hosts another million refugees from Nigeria’s 7-year old Islamic insurgency. This wasn't only an attack on humanitarian workers. It's an attack on the folks who most need the support and help these workers were bringing," Porter said. The convoy that was attacked was traveling from the city of Bama, newly freed from Boko Haram, where Doctors Without Borders has warned that kids are dying every day with 15 percent suffering serious acute malnutrition and likely to die without food and medical aid.    codxperience.com.ngMore than 500,000 people are enduring a "devastating crisis" in that was humanitarian dangerous-to-reach areas, said the doctors.  A Doctors Without Borders vehicle traveling with a military escort set off a land mine before this week several kilometers (miles) in the scene of Thursday’s ambush but no one was hurt, according to soldiers who were there. They spoke on condition of anonymity since they are not authorized to speak to reporters.  Military spokesman Col. Sani Kukasheka Usman said the insurgents were hiding in Meleri village near Kawuri, the official entrance to the sprawling Sambisa Forest that has been a Boko Haram stronghold. The military warned earlier this month that Boko Haram fighters were fleeing its daily aerial bombardments and ground attacks in the forest, heading toward the border with Cameroon. Some Boko Haram fighters who surrendered have reported the militants are running out of arms, fuel and food, the military has said, saying they've cut off the insurgents’ supply lines. The uprising by Boko Haram, which joined the Islamic State group last year, has killed more than 20,000 people, forced more than 2 million from their houses and disperse across Nigeria’s borders to Cameroon, Chad and Niger. U.N.: Almost 50,000 children at risk of starvation due to Boko Haram effort Nearly a quarter of a million children are severely malnourished in just one state in northeastern Nigeria, where a lot more than a million people have been displaced by a violent effort by Islamist extremists and kept help groups away, a major international group reported Tuesday. Starting in 2011, Boko Haram took over tremendous numbers of territory in Nigeria and moved into Chad and nearby Cameroon. The Nigerian military has dislodged the combatants from most of their strongholds. But the insurgents have kept their capacity to consistently strike soft targets, such as mosques or displacement camps. That's caused it to be tough for many assistance groups to operate. "Though many of these areas are no longer under Boko Haram control, they are still dangerous ," said a spokeswoman for UNICEF in Nigeria, Doune Porter. Northeastern Nigeria is now the site of one of the world’s greatest displacement crises, with more than 1.4 million individuals having been compelled to flee their homes. But because the region is not accessible and dangerous, it receives relatively little international assistance. Nigeria’s own assistance apparatus has a small record of effectiveness, and some pros say serious mismanagement plagues it. "There are 2 million individuals we're still not able to reach in Borno state, which means the true scope of the catastrophe has yet to be revealed to the world," said Manuel Fontaine, UNICEF’s director for West and Central Africa. There are organizations on the ground doing great work, but none of us are capable to work that we want. We must scale up." In addition to the displaced, many of those facing acute food shortages relied on farms that raided or have been ruined by Boko Haram combatants. The collapse of government services has exacerbated the malnutrition crisis in places where the insurgents happen to be active.  Thirty percent of health facilities damaged or and 70 percent of the water infrastructure in Borno continues to be ruined, according to the United Nations.  According to the UNICEF report, about 50,000 of the children will expire if they don’t receive food and medical attention soon.  The report focused on Borno state, which has suffered the worst of mass kidnappings and Boko Haram’s assaults. Yet while those crimes are well known — particularly the kidnapping of more than 200 schoolgirls from town of Chibok — the huge humanitarian impact of the group’s effort has received less attention. At one displacement camp in the city of Bama, the aid group Doctors Without Borders reported last month that people were dying of starvation. UNICEF has appealed for $55.5 million to respond to the disaster in northeastern Nigeria but has received only $23 million. All the humanitarian actors are under-resourced and underfunded, and it’s an extremely challenging problem," Porter said. MAIDUGURI, Nigeria — In the centre of the woods, they were kept in tiny thatched huts for months, waiting due to their rapists to return each evening with dread. During the almost intolerable violence, the young women’s heads drifted to death or escape. The victims were as young as 8.  At the heart of Boko Haram’s self-proclaimed caliphate in northeastern Nigeria was a savage campaign of rape and sexual slavery that has only recently been uncovered. Thousands of women and girls were held against their will, subject to relentless indoctrination and forced marriages. Those that resisted were frequently shot.  Now, many of the girls are unexpectedly free — rescued in a number of Nigerian military operations over the past year that dislodged the extremist Islamist group from most of the territory it controlled. But there have been few joyous family reunions for the sufferers. Most of the remaining girls no further have homes. Their cities were burned to the ground. The military has quietly deposited them in displacement camps or abandoned buildings, where they are monitored by armed men distrustful of their faithfulness. They may be still labeled "Boko Haram wives." Few could have envisioned such an outcome two years ago, when Boko Haram kidnaped 276 schoolgirls and the world reacted with the Bring Back Our Girls campaign. Many people presumed the other kidnapped women would be warmly welcomed back while most of those schoolgirls from Chibok are missing. Instead, they may be shunned. For Halima, Hamsatu 25, and seven months, 15 raped nearly every single day by the same unit of fighters in the remote Sambisa Forest. Now, they live in a narrow, white tent in a displacement camp, with empty cement bags sewn together to create a curtain. The girls spoke on the condition that their full names were not used to be able to freely describe their experiences. When Halima leaves the tent to get food another folks living in the camp scowl at her or carefully move away. You ’re the one who was married to Boko Haram," one older girl spat at her recently. We can’t trust any of them," said one guard. Authorities say there are great reasons for his or her wariness. Last year, 39 of 89 Boko Haram suicide bombings were carried out by women, according to UNICEF. Twenty-one of those female attackers were from villages and cities apparently abducted under the age of 18, many of them women and converted into assassins. Since January, female attackers have killed hundreds of people in mosques, markets as well as displacement camps. No one understands just why some women who were caught and mistreated became killers. Maybe it was the indoctrination. Maybe it was the ’ threats that are militants. The occupation of reintegrating the displaced, either way has become immensely more complicated. And for survivors trying to move ahead from a horrific phase of their lives, there is now a brand new agony. "There is no trust here," said Hamsatu, wearing the same pink and crouching in her tent, flowery dress she had on when she was kidnapped 18 months past. In her arms, she held the baby of her captor. It was September 2014 when Boko Haram fighters took over Hamsatu’s and Halima’s house city of Bama, near the Cameroonian border. Many of the 350,000 residents managed to flee. But the combatants instantaneously started killing the man civilians who couldn’t escape. Some were shot within their dwellings. Others were beheaded and thrown in mass graves. With a group of about 25 other women, Hamsatu and Halima say, they were moved by the militants from home to home and after that compelled to go on foot and on the backs of motorcycles to the Sambisa Forest, where Boko Haram had set up camps for its sex slaves. The girls were each assigned to your sliver of a hut, hardly big enough to lie down. Hamsatu said that days later, the name of one combatant, whose, entered the hut and said a prayer in what sounded to her. They were wed, he told her. She thought of her actual husband, who'd been missing since the day Boko Haram stormed Bama. "I do if he’s not dead," she said n’t know. Video claims to reveal Nigerian girls kidnapped by militants two years past A video purporting to reveal some of the more than 200 girls kidnapped by Nigerian-based Islamist militant group Boko Haram has surfaced on the abduction’s second anniversary. Obtained by CNN and in the video, believed to have been made in December, 15 girls are expressionless as they state their names to a man heard off camera. Wednesday "We are all nicely," said among the girls in the video, first air. She subsequently supported the Nigerian authorities to meet Boko Haram’s demands, which were not stated. CNN reported that the video was made as "part of discussions between the government and Boko Haram." buildingconstructiondirectory.com.ngAlthough Nigerian officials have alluded vaguely to possible discussions, there have been few details that were clear as the militants continue to wage attacks. The kidnapping of the 276 schoolgirls got worldwide attention, and Nigeria’s president, Muhammadu Buhari, pledged to bring them home. Several girls managed to escape, but 219 are still missing. The last time the girls were seen publicly was in a May 2014 video. In Nigeria, rumors have swirled over their fate that was potential. Some women held by Boko Haram in other areas have described a widespread effort of sexual abuse and forced marriages by the extremists. The just released video shows the missing girls with head scarves that are flowing that hide everything but their faces. Despite the sketchy information provided in the video, Nigeria’s advice minister, Lai Mohammed, told CNN the girls in the video appeared "under no tension whatsoever." CNN also spoke to a classmate of the kidnapped girls, who said they recognized the young women and moms. "I felt like removing her from the screen, " said Rifkatu Ayuba, whose daughter was among the 15 girls revealed. The girls, taken in the northeastern town of Chibok, became an international symbol of the battle although thousands of people are kidnapped by Boko Haram in modern times. The Usa has dispatched military trainers and surveillance drones, and activists around the world united on social media behind the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls. "Two years on, the Chibok girls have come to symbolize all the civilians whose lives have already been devastated by Boko Haram," said Amnesty International’s Nigeria director, M.K. Ibrahim. The United Nations is helping support some of the individuals who escaped in the Islamist group, many of whom live in straggly displacement camps and abandoned buildings. The girls are believed to take the distant Sambisa forest in northeastern Nigeria. Although the nation’s military has dislodged militants from cities and towns, a search and rescue operation in the forest is thought to be far tougher. The video’s transmission coincided with a report by the U.N. kids’s bureau UNICEF accusing Boko Haram of sharply raising the use of child suicide bombers — with girls accounting for more than three-quarters of them — in Nigeria, Cameroon and Chad. Some of the girls are presumed to have now been kidnapped by the extremists. Boko Haram is driving more children to execute suicide bombings In the last two years, Boko Haram militants have increasingly turned to a brand new strategy in their attacks in West Africa: child suicide bombers. How many children involved in such blasts grew more than tenfold, from four in 2014 to 44 in 2015, in accordance with a report released by the U.N. kids’s bureau on Tuesday. And more than three-quarters of the kids are girls — some as young as 8 years old. Another view that is chilling is added by the statements by UNICEF into the atrocities blamed on the Boko Haram group, which has conducted mass kidnappings of children, including more than 200 school girls abducted from a boarding school in northern Nigeria. Women and some girls who escaped have maintained that prisoners confront forced marriages and sexual abuse. "let's be clear: These kids are victims, not " said Manuel Fontaine, UNICEF’s regional manager for West and Central Africa, in a statement. " Deceiving children and compelling them to perform actions that are fatal has been one of the most horrific aspects of the violence in nearby countries and in Nigeria." Offensives by security forces in Nigeria, Cameroon and Chad have compelled the Islamist group from most of the land it once controlled. In response, Boko Haram has conducted an increasing quantity of strikes on civilian targets, killing hundreds of people in recent months. The report also reveals Boko Haram’s push in northern Nigeria in the last couple of years outside its former strongholds. 21, nearly half the child suicide attacks, were in neighboring Cameroon, it said. But international aid groups and both Nigerian officials have struggled to explain the reason behind the surge in child attackers. The rise in Boko Haram’s case is stunning, although youthful suicide bombers are used in other conflict zones. 20 percent of most suicide bombings completed by the group have been children, based on UNICEF. Boko Haram from their houses abducted some of the children, and their bodies were identified months later from stays after suicide attacks. A young girl blew herself up in a mosque in the northern Ni ger ian city of Maiduguri, killing at least 22 people, last month. Her identity hasn't yet been determined. The Nigerian military, because of its part, has come to treat kids abducted by Boko Haram as risks no distinct from adults. Boys have appeared on "wanted posters" across northeastern Nigeria — once the stronghold for the group — along with heaps of top Boko Haram suspects. "Banditry knows no age," said Maj. Gen. Lucky Irabor, the top military official in the northeast, when a Washington Post reporter asked about the lads on the poster. But according to UNICEF, many of the strikes are ran involuntarily. "Lads are forced to assault their own families to present their loyalty " the report said. Hundreds of girls, meanwhile, have already been taken by the group. "The calculated use of youngsters, who may have been coerced into taking bombs, has created an atmosphere of fear and mistrust that's devastating effects for girls that have survived sexual and captivity violence " said UNICEF’s report. In a separate report from Human Rights Watch released Tuesday, researchers said that "Nigeria’s through the use of schools as military bases, placing children at additional risk of attack from the Islamist armed group security forces have contributed to the problem." Human Rights Watch also reported that "at least 611 teachers happen to be purposefully killed." Nearly 1.3 million schoolchildren have been displaced by the conflict, according to UNICEF, including 5,000 children separated from their parents. And violence just isn't the only threat facing youngsters in the area. By January, 195,000 children were suffering from severe acute malnutrition. Army says no more Boko Haram camps in North East The Acting Manager, Army Public Relations, Col. Sani Usman, said there were no camps of Boko Haram terrorists in the northeastern area of the country anymore. He said: "The position in the North East has tremendously improved. The military operations or the fight against terrorism and insurgency in the North East is hinged on three things. Based on the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), Usman, who revealed this yesterday while addressing newsmen at the inauguration of Strategic Communication Class for senior officers at the Nigerian Army School of Public Relations and Information, Bonny Camp, Lagos, said the military was winning the war against terrorism.  "First, defeating the Boko Haram terrorists which have been accomplished and making room to facilitate humanitarian assistance that is also ongoing. "Then restoration of order and law for good governance to take place.   tasuedcampus.com.ng"We no more have camps of Boko Haram terrorists and we no longer have them in the lands."  On the inauguration of the communication lessons, Usman said that training of personnel was overriding, including that it would improve proficiency.  He thanked the Chief of Army Staff, Lt.-Gen. Tukur Buratai, for enhancing the Nigerian Army configurations.  Additionally, the NASPRI Commandant, Col. John Agim, said the course was to better equip senior officers who were saddled with the responsibility of shaping the information environment.  As you settle down to confront the rigours of this class, I urge you to take advantage of the training to enhance your capability in public relations.  "Also, accentuate your capability and by extension in the field of arms", Agim said.  Northern group wants amnesty for Boko Haram  A group, the Northern Inter-faith and Religious Organisation for Peace (NIROP), has reiterated call for an amnesty programme for repentant members of the Boko Haram sect. The group also commended President Muhammadu Buhari for the absorption of members of the local vigilance outfit, also referred to as Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF), into security agencies. National Coordinator of NIROP, Bishop Musa Fomson, who spoke with reporters in Abuja, yesterday, said: "We need to suggest the authorities firmly consider granting amnesty to members of Boko Haram which aren't high up in its command structure, as an incentive to make them drop their weapons without additional human toll. "What is on trial here is our humanity. Even as the war on terror reaches the advanced stage of clearing out remnants of the sect, departures are being recorded on all sides. A motivator from putting up stiff fight to stop the remaining terrorists is to support surrender. This should particularly target the non combatant elements of those and the terror group that were coerced into joining the sect." NIROP, however, warned the amnesty should focus on demobilising Boko Haram members "and mustn't be converted into a money making jamboree. It should also be tracked in a way that it's possible to keep track of those that sign up for the deal." Commending President Buhari on the absorption of members of the CJTF, Bishop Fomson said: " Their training and absorption into the Nigerian Army and other agencies is a verification that the fight against terrorism has reached the point where homegrown options need to be engineered. The issue has been to disarm and demobilise the youths, after they have been compelled to carry arms. Those raising the anxiety were afraid of what would occur when the military has totally defeated Boko Haram. The youths could become a source of trouble although they will have the skills to fight but are not gainfully used." Boko Haram Ambush: Military yet to support variety of soldiers  Not less than 10 soldiers are said to be missing in action, when troops of the Nigeria Army walked into an ambush laid by Boko Haram insurgents on Thursday morning. The authorities of the Nigeria Army are yet to validate the amount.    -boko-haram-horizontal-large-gallery.jpg" style="max-width:400px;float:left;padding:10px 10px 10px 0px;border:0px;">But a statement issued by the Acting Manager, Army Public Relations (Ag.DAPR) Col Sani Usman, confirmed that soldiers returning from a successful operation seen the insurgents, inflicted casualties on them, but "a few others were missing in action." A source told The Guardian that the soldiers that were lost were before the ambush, in the thick of action, "but when you are exchanging fire you CAn't start to look out for everybody. So it was a tough circumstances "The terrorists assaulted within their amounts, the troops were taken unawares, but the actual figure would be made public soon," the source said.  The statement read in part: "Troops on clearance patrol at Guro Gongon village and environs to rout out remnants of Boko Haram terrorists hibernating therein, destroyed the terrorists’ makeshift camps and regained fairly a number of gear, weapons and foodstuff in the process. "Yet, the gallant soldiers basking on the recorded success, returning to their places that are defensive, ran by a group of Boko Haram terrorists who came to augment their comrades that are fleeing.