Boko Haram freed Nigerian women tell of captivity horror story

 

 BBC's Donna Larsen reports "The Nigerian army has freed nearly 700 hostages in the last week"

It was reported that after the interviewing the former hostages held by Boko Haram militants in northern Nigeria the previously freed captives stated that some fellow captives were stoned to death as the army approached to rescue them.

The women stated that Boko Haram fighters started killing them when they refused to run away with the boko haram militants as the army came approached.

A group of nearly 300 women and children was brought out of the deep Sambisa forest to a government camp for proper protection and care.

The military reported it has rescued more than 700 people in the past week from the Islamic group .The women said that several others were killed in the stoning, but they did not know how many they were. The women also reported that several others were killed inadvertently by the military during the rescue operation, because the military did not know they were no the militant.

Soldiers did not realize "in time that we were not the enemies" and some women and children were "run over by their trucks", said survivor Asama Umoru.

Salamatu Bulama says she was among the women stoned by the militants and the military.

It was reported that during the interview the survivors said that when they were initially captured, the militants had killed men and older boys in front of their families before taking women and children into the forest and some women were forced into marriage.

It was reported that some of the children were severely malnourished many are now eating their first proper meal for months.

Other survivors reported that the militant Islamists never let them out of their sight, not even when they went to the toilet.

"They didn't allow us to move an inch," one of the freed women, Asabe Umaru, told Reuters news agency. "We were kept in one place. We were under bondage."

One woman described how they were fed just one meal a day. "We were fed only ground dry maize in the afternoons. It was not good for human consumption," Cecilia Abel told Reuters news agency.

"Every day, we witnessed the death of one of us and waited for our turn," said Umaru, a 24-year-old mother of two.

It was reported some of the children were "just little skeletal bodies with flaps of skin that make them look like old people", Associated Press reporter Michelle Faul told the BBC after visiting the camp where survivors were staying.

A doctor, Muhammad Amin Suleiman, said many severely malnourished babies and children had been put on intravenous drips at a clinic to help sustain their health.

The women stated that they and children had to travel for three days on pick-up trucks from the vast Sambisa forest where they were rescued, to the camp in the city of Yola, where they arrived on a Saturday night.

Through interviews, officials have determined that almost all those rescued are from Gumsuri, a village near the town of Chibok, the Associated Press news agency reports.

Thousands have been killed in northern Nigeria since Boko Haram began its insurgency in 2009 to create an Islamic state.

In February, Nigeria's military, backed by troops from neighboring countries, launched a major offensive against the Islamist fighters, recapturing most of the territory Boko Haram had taken in the previous year.

Their last remaining hideouts are believed to be in the Sambisa forest which the milliary have also taken over.

Link; bbc news