Boko Haram releases new video of kidnapped girls
The Takfiri Boko Haram militants have released a new video purportedly showing some of the girls who they kidnapped from the Nigerian town of Chibok in 2014.
In the footage released on Sunday, one of the militants claims that some of the girls are still alive, and the others were killed in airstrikes by the Nigerian air force on the Boko Haram compound.
"They should know that their children are still in our hands," said a Boko Haram militant who appeared before rows of the schoolgirls in the 11-minute video, adding, "Some of them have died as a result of aerial bombardment."
"There is a number of the girls, about 40 of them, that have been married," the man said.
The militant whose face was covered by a turban in the video also called for the release of his comrades in exchange for the freedom of the girls.
The militants abducted 276 girls from their secondary school in the northeastern town in April 2014. Fifty-seven of the girls managed to escape, but nearly 220 others are still missing and international efforts to spot and rescue them have so far failed.
Abubakar Shekau, Boko Haram's leader, had earlier said he would "marry them off" or sell them as "slaves."
The Takfiri terrorist group has killed and kidnapped a large number of civilians, including women, over the past few years.
It was the third such video released by the militants since the kidnapping took place.
Last year, Amnesty International said at least 2,000 women and girls had been kidnapped by Boko Haram in Nigeria since the beginning of 2014, and many of them had been forced into sexual slavery or combat.
An estimated 20,000 people have been killed and more than two million others made homeless since the beginning of the bloody Boko Haram militancy in Nigeria in 2009.
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