Suspected Boko Haram Islamists have kidnapped eight more
girls from Borno State, residents said on Tuesday, after the extremist
group’s leader claimed responsibility for abducting more than 200
schoolgirls last month.
“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.”
Police in Borno did not respond to calls or
text messages seeking comment, and state government spokesman Isa Gusau
said he was not aware of the attack.
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 April 14
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.
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