Boko Haram kidnaps 22 women and girls

ABUJA, Nigeria—Boko Haram extremists kidnapped 22 women and girls from villages in Nigeria’s northeastern Borno state in the past week, according to witnesses and vigilante fighters. But Nigeria’s security officials denied the claims, saying the region remains fully secured.

Witnesses said the Islamic extremists on Thursday entered the village of Pulka near the Cameroonian border and abducted 18 girls. One of the villagers, Idris Yusuf, told Nigeria’s This Day Live the attackers did not harm anyone else during the raid.

In a separate attack near Dumba village in the southern part of the state, the attackers kidnapped four women. Adamu Ahmed, a member of an anti-Boko Haram militia, told AFP the fighters went after a herdsman who refused to pay protection money.

“They caught up with him near Dumba, where they slaughtered him and shot dead 50 of his cattle,” Ahmed said. “They took four women from the man’s family and the rest of the herd.”

Boko Haram’s insurgency has killed 20,000 people and displaced about 2 million others in Nigeria and neighboring countries. The terror group triggered international outrage when it kidnapped more than 200 schoolgirls from the town of Chibok in 2014. The crisis has triggered a large-scale humanitarian crisis in Nigeria’s northeast. According to the United Nations, some 7 million people in the region are battling food insecurity.

In a statement, the Nigerian army denied both the attacks and the kidnappings reported this week.

“Pulka and its environment is heavily fortified, and there has not been any security breach in the area,” the statement said.

The army claims it has defeated Boko Haram and is only carrying out final operations on the group’s remaining enclaves. But the terror group continues to carry out random strikes and suicide attacks. Three suicide bombers on March 19 killed a civilian fighter along with a mother and her two children in Borno state. Less than a week later, five suicide bombers killed three people in separate attacks in Maiduguri, Borno’s capital.

Martin Ewi, a senior researcher with South Africa’s Institute for Security Studies, said Boko Haram is significantly weakened but has not been defeated. Kidnapping remains a survival tactic for the group, Ewi noted. Nigeria needs more than a military response to the crisis, he said. Ewi and others have called for reconciliation efforts and a national criminal tribunal to begin mass investigations into the terrorism. If such remedies are not included in the fight, “people will bear their grievances, and Boko Haram will only morph into something else,” Ewi warned.