Number of girls taken in latest Borno kidnap rises to 11

The number of Nigerian girls taken in the latest kidnapping by Boko Haram Islamists has risen to 11, a local official in the restive northeast said Tuesday.

Residents had said that gunmen stormed the Warabe village in the Gwoza area of Borno state late Sunday and abducted eight girls.

Speaking to AFP, Gwoza local government official Hamba Tada confirmed the Warabe attack and said, “after leaving Warabe the gunmen stormed the Wala village which is five kilometres (three miles) away and abducted three more girls.”

An earlier report said the number of kidnapped girls were eight but new findings found that 11 girls were kidnapped, although some residents said it could be more.

“They moved door to door looking for girls,” said Abdullahi Sani, referring to the late Sunday attack in the village of Warabe, Borno State. “They forcefully took away eight girls between the ages of 12 and 15.”

Sani, a Warabe resident, spoke to AFP by phone from Gwoza, a town 10 kilometres (six miles) away where he and others fled after the attack, which he blamed on Boko Haram.

He said the attackers did not kill anyone, which was “surprising”, and suggested that abducting girls was the motive for the attack. The gunmen torched parts of the village, he said.

Another Warabe resident who also fled to Gwoza, Peter Gambo, confirmed Sani’s account of the attack and said the military had not yet provided any protection.

“We in Gwoza are also living in fear because of the kidnap of eight girls in Warabe,” he told AFP. “We have no security here. If the gunmen decide to pick our own girls nobody can stop them.”

The targeted area is 160 kilometres (100 miles) from Borno’s State capital of Maiduguri, where Boko Haram was founded more than a decade ago.

Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau said his fighters carried out the 14 April abduction of more than 200 girls from Chibok, also in Borno, and threatened to sell them as slaves in a video obtained by AFP on Monday.