12 girls kidnapped in Nigeria freed by their kidnappers, local official says

The gang that kidnapped a group of young women in NigeriaThe northeastern state of Borno released the remaining 12 a week ago on Saturday night, a local official told News.

His release occurs when the country has experienced an increase in kidnappings of young people during the last two weeks.

“All 12 were released,” Abubakar Mazhinyi, president of the Askira-Uba local council, told News, adding that they were taken to hospital.

“They (the jihadists) talked to the parents,” he said. “It was the parents who went to the mountains.”

Last Saturday, 13 Muslim women and girls, between 16 and 23 years old, were kidnapped near their farms, on land near a nature reserve converted into a jihadist hideout.

The gang freed one of them after she told them she was breastfeeding a baby.

No ransom was paid and the jihadists freed the women because the army was after them, Mazhinyi said.

Borno state is at the center of Nigeria’s conflict with jihadists, which began 16 years ago with Boko Haram.

It was the scene of the kidnapping in 2014 of almost 300 girls in chibok.

While the jihadist threat has diminished, both Boko Haram and its secessionist rival Islamic State in West Africa Province remain dangerous.

The conflict has claimed the lives of more than 40,000 people and forced more than two million people to flee their homes, according to UN figures.

The violence is not limited to the northeast of the country.

Last week, captured armed gangs More than 300 children from a Catholic school in the central-western Niger Delta state.

Although some managed to escape, more than 265 children and teachers remain detained.

These kidnappings have been claimed by bandits and not by jihadists.

Nigeria has a history of mass kidnappings, mostly carried out by criminal gangs seeking ransom payments and targeting vulnerable populations in rural areas with little policing.