(MENAFN- Arab Times) Nigerian troops have rescued about 160 more hostages from Boko Haram's Sambisa Forest stronghold, the army said on Thursday, taking the total number liberated this week alone to nearly 500.
The numbers underlined the scale of the tactic of mass abduction used by the militants, who according to Amnesty International have seized about 2,000 women and girls since the start of last year. Amnesty's Africa director for research and advocacy, Netsanet Belay, said the rescues were a "cause for celebration" but he warned: "This is just the tip of the iceberg. "There are thousands more women and girls, and men and boys, who have been abducted by Boko Haram," he said in a statement.
Female former hostages have described being subjected to forced labour, sexual and psychological abuse as well as having to fight on the frontline alongside the rebels. The first release of 200 girls and 93 women was announced on Tuesday, raising hopes that some of the 219 girls snatched from their school in Chibok in April last year were among them. Army spokesman Sani Usman has said the Chibok girls were not part of the group but defence headquarters in Abuja has said it was too early to say.
The mass kidnapping from Chibok, in Borno state, prompted global outrage and forced President Goodluck Jonathan to accept international help in the search operation for the missing girls. All the former hostages - some of whom are said to be traumatised by the experience - were being screened to determine their identities and from where and when they were kidnapped.
On Thursday, Usman said about 160 more hostages were freed in an operation involving troops from the army's 7th Division, which has been tasked with fighting Boko Haram. "We are still trying to compute the actual number of those rescued. But tentatively there are about 60 women of various ages and around 100 children," he told AFP. One woman was killed in the fighting and eight other rescued hostages were injured. A soldier was also killed and four others wounded.
Meanwhile, some of the nearly 300 girls and women freed by Nigeria's military from the forest stronghold of Boko Haram were so transformed by their captivity that they opened fire on their rescuers, and experts said Wednesday they would need intensive psychological treatment. The military was flying in medical and intelligence teams to evaluate the former captives, many of whom were severely traumatized, said army spokesman Col Sani Usman. "The processing is continuing, it involves a lot of things because most of them are traumatized and you have got to put them in a psychological frame of mind to extract information from them," Usman said.
A counselor who has treated other women freed from Boko Haram captivity said some had become indoctrinated into believing the group's Islamic extremist ideology, while others had established strong emotional attachments to militants they had been forced to marry. In related story, the European Parliament Thursday passed a resolution by 516 votes to 11 strongly condemning the massacres perpetrated by the Boko Haram group in Nigeria. It urged the Nigerian authorities to do their utmost to end the violence and tackle the root causes of the terrorism, including corruption.
The EP urged Nigeria's neighbours and the international community to cooperate with efforts to starve Boko Haram of income and prevent it spreading terror abroad. Everything possible must be done to find and free the 276 girls Boko Haram abducted from the school in Chibok more than a year ago, and the estimated 2, 000 more girls and women it has abducted since then, it said.
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