NIGERIAN SCHOOLGIRLS ABDUCTION

Armed militants from Islamist movement Boko Haram stormed into an all-girls secondary school in the village of Chibok, Nigeria, packing around 276 teenagers onto trucks before disappearing into a remote, hilly area along the Cameroon border. The kidnapping sparked international outrage with numerous countries pledging to help locate the missing girls and eradicate the Boko Haram. Despite all the international assistance, only a handful of girls have been recovered, having escaped their captors and fleeing into the bush.
The military fuelled confusion in the immediate aftermath by incorrectly saying most of the girls had been rescued. On the following day parents and some girls who escaped said more than 200 students were seized from their school by gunmen overnight. Locals said many remained unaccounted for and parents of the missing girls headed into the Sambisa forest near the Cameroonian border to search for them.

Asabe Kwambura, headmistress of the school in Chibok, appealed to the government to do more to save the girls and called on the kidnappers - thought to be members of the Boko Haram group - to "have mercy on the students." Nigerians took to social media to show their anger at the government response and Ibrahim M Abdullahi, a lawyer in Abuja, sent the first tweet using the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls.
In May President Goodluck Jonathan made his first public comments since the abduction, saying his government was seeking assistance from the US and other world powers to tackle Nigeria's "security challenge". Following it, Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau in a video statement said his group were behind the abduction of the girls and threatens to "sell" them in the market as "slaves". US President Barack Obama mentioned the incident as "heartbreaking" abduction". He promised US experts’ dispatching to help find the girls.

The #BringBackOurGirls hashtag hit 1 million tweets and US First Lady Michelle Obama joined the online campaign, posting a picture of herself on photo-sharing site Instagram holding a piece of paper with the hashtag on. Malala Yousafzai also joined the #BringBackOurGirls campaign and said the world must not stay silent over the abduction. Experts from the US and UK arrived in Nigeria to help with the search for the missing girls.
Amnesty International accused Nigeria's military of ignoring warnings before the abduction. The human rights group said credible sources told it that the army was notified of an impending attack four hours before it happened but did nothing. Boko Haram released a new video claiming to show around 130 of the abducted girls at an unknown location. In the video, the group's leader said he would not free the girls until authorities would release all imprisoned militants.

Source: BBC