| Submit your comments on this article |
| Africa Subsaharan |
| Nigeria Denies Reports of New Mass Boko Haram Kidnapping |
| 2015-03-26 |
| [AnNahar] Nigeria's government on Wednesday denied reports of a mass kidnapping in the country's northeast, as Boko Haram ... not to be confused with Procol Harum, Harum Scarum, possibly to be confused with Helter Skelter. The Nigerian version of al-Qaeda and the Taliban rolled together and flavored with a smigeon of distinctly Subsaharan ignorance and brutality... murderous Moslems flee a four-nation military offensive. "There is no fresh kidnapping in Damasak," Nigeria's national security front man Mike Omeri told Agence La Belle France-Presse, referring to the town recently retaken by forces from neighboring Chad and Niger. Reports suggested that the Islamist holy warriors, who seized the town in Borno state earlier this year, made off with hundreds of children as they fled the troops' advance. But Omeri said Nigeria had no information about a mass abduction. A senator who represents the area and a senior intelligence source also cast doubt on the reports. The contradictory claims shed light on the difficulty of establishing facts in the brutal, six-year conflict, with communications infrastructure devastated in the northeast and travel restricted. Officials, the military and locals frequently give contrasting information. The murderous Moslems do have a track record of mass kidnappings, however, including the high-profile abduction of more than 200 schoolgirls in April last year from the Borno town of Chibok. Details about the kidnapping were muddied for weeks by military and official denials of details reported by the affected families. The disputes over what actually happened were finally laid to rest when Boko Haram released a video picturing dozens of the hostages, who were subsequently identified by relatives. Omeri noted Boko Haram's widely reported tactic of forcibly conscripting young boys during their hit-and-run attacks and attempts to indoctrinate them into the group's radical ideology. Many Boko Haram fighters are believed to be on the run as a result of the offensive by Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon ...a long, narrow country that fills the space between Nigeria and Chad on the northeast, CAR to the southeast. Prior to incursions by Boko Haram nothing ever happened there... , who have routed the bully boyz from dozens of towns. Several sources said it was possible, and perhaps even likely, that scores of Boko Haram conscripts were missing, feared kidnapped by the murderous Moslems across the region. But they denied a specific mass abduction in Damasak, where the Chadian military last week said that about 100 bodies, some of them decapitated, were found in a mass grave. Senator Maina Lawan, whose constituency includes Damasak, said: "I will be extremely surprised that such a huge number of my constituents would be kidnapped without me being informed. "It is very unlikely that Boko Haram would have kidnapped such a huge number of people from Damasak because most of the people had fled months ago when Boko Haram took over‎." A senior intelligence source in Borno's capital Maiduguri said there was "no iota of truth" to the mass abduction claims. |
| Posted by:trailing wife |