UK, US experts join Nigeria search for girls
Print Edition
BRITISH experts arrived in Nigeria yesterday to help find at least 276 girls being held by Islamic militants in northeastern Nigeria as an international effort began taking hold.
The experts are expected to work closely with US officials and agents in the search for the missing girls, the UK government said as Boko Haram militants continued to stage attacks in northeastern Nigeria. China and France have also promised help, and the deputy prime minister of Spain, Soraya Saenz de Santamaria, said in Madrid yesterday her government had decided to make available a specialist police team to assist, if Nigeria approves.
Britain said its aim was not only to help with the current crisis but to defeat Boko Haram.
“The team will be considering not just the recent incidents but also longer-term counter-terrorism solutions to prevent such attacks in the future and defeat Boko Haram,” the Foreign & Commonwealth Office said in a statement yesterday.
A local government official confirmed that the Islamic extremists bombed a bridge linking the town of Gamboru to the Borno state capital, Maiduguri, the headquarters of the Nigerian military offensive. Gamboru was attacked on Monday by Boko Haram, leaving many dead. Estimates of the death toll from that attack ranged from 100 to as many as 300. Local security officials said yesterday that Boko Haram militants bombed the bridge as they retreated following the attack on Gamboru’s main market, where at least 50 bodies have since been discovered from the debris of burned shops.
Communications with the remote town are difficult and it was not immediately possible to reconcile conflicting accounts of when the bridge was bombed.
The bombing of the bridge also prevents army convoys reaching Gamboru while leaving the way open for the insurgents to escape across a strategic bridge into neighboring Cameroon.
The mass kidnapping of the schoolgirls has focused the world’s attention on Boko Haram, and on the many civilian victims of the extremists.
President Goodluck Jonathan said at an economic forum on Thursday: “I believe that the kidnap of these girls will be the beginning of the end of terror in Nigeria.”
But his government is accused of being slow to mount operations to rescue the girls, who were kidnapped on April 15, charges it vehemently denies.
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