After
Nigeria’s military reported rescuing a second “Chibok girl” in a forest battle
with Islamic extremists, a community leader said Friday she is not on the list
of 218 students who were abducted from a school in 2014 by Boko Haram.
Serah
Luke, a kidnapped and rescued Chibok schoolgirl | Nigerian Army Photo
Army
spokesman Col. Sani Kukasheka Usman said soldiers freed the girl after a
Thursday night battle in the northeastern Sambisa Forest in which
it liberated 97 women and children and killed 35 extremists. He said she is No.
157 on the list of the 218 girls who were seized more than two years ago from a
boarding school in Chibok.
But No.
157 has a different name, Chibok community leader Pogu Bitrus told The
Associated Press. The list has two other young women sharing the surname
given by the military, and the rescued girl may have been visiting older
sisters at the school the night of the kidnapping, said Bitrus.
The first
Chibok teenager to be freed with a 4-month-old baby and was discovered by hunters
wandering on the fringes of the Sambisa Forest on Tuesday. On Thursday, Amina
Ali Nkeki, 19, was flown to Abuja to meet with Nigeria’s President Muhammadu
Buhari.
Parents
of the kidnapped girls, the Bring Back Our Girls movement and aid workers all
have criticized the Nigerian government and military for their handling of the
development, with Refugees International charging her escape is being
politicized and that she should not be paraded in public but getting urgent
medical care for sexual abuse and psychosocial counseling.
Ali has
revealed that a few of the girls died in captivity but most remain under heavy
guard in the forest, according to family doctor Idriss Danladi. The AP does not
identify suspected victims of sexual assault but named Ali after she appeared
on TV alongside the president.
Read more
at www.thetrentonline.com
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