News Article 10

Nigerian Women freed by Boko Haram tell of captivity horror

Former hostages held by Boko Haram militants in northern Nigeria say some fellow captives were stoned to death as the army approached to rescue them.

The Military says many Boko Haram bases in the Sambisa Forest have been destroyed

The women said Boko Haram fighters started pelting them when they refused to run away as the army came nearer. A group of nearly 300 women and children was brought out of the vast Sambisa forest to a government camp.

The military says it has rescued more than 700 people in the past week in an offensive against the Islamist group. The women said several were killed in the stoning, but they did not know how many.

Others were killed inadvertently by the military during the rescue operation, they added. Soldiers did not realise "in time that we were not the enemies" and some women and children were "run over by their trucks", said survivor Asama Umoru.

The survivors said that when they were initially captured, the militants had killed men and older boys in front of their families before taking women and children into the forest. Some were forced into marriage. One woman, Lami Musa, 27, said she had avoided that fate. "When they realised I was pregnant, they said I was impregnated by an infidel [her husband] and they killed him," she said.

Other survivors said the militant Islamists never let them out of their sight - not even when they went to the toilet. "They didn't allow us to move an inch," one of the freed women, Asabe Umaru, told Reuters news agency. "We were kept in one place. We were under bondage."

One woman described how they were fed just one meal a day. "We were fed only ground dry maize in the afternoons. It was not good for human consumption," Cecilia Abel told Reuters. "Every day, we witnessed the death of one of us and waited for our turn," said Umaru, a 24-year-old mother of two.

Boko Haram is said to have abducted over 2000 women and children but of those released none of the freed women and children are thought to be any of the 300 school girls that were abducted more than 1 year ago. 

I think the events that have happened in Nigeria are absolutely awful and the rest of the captive need to be found and returned. What is happening in Nigeria is not aired on the news enough so people don't understand just how terrible the events have gotten.